Maps

Environment Digimap provides mapping data from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH).

UKCEH's land cover map can be viewed or downloaded for different years. The first published land cover map was in 1990, and the most recently available in Digimap was published in 2020.

Land cover maps describe the physical material on the surface of the United Kingdom providing an uninterrupted national dataset of land cover classes from grassland, woodland and fresh water to urban and suburban built-up areas. 

The Land Cover Map data can be used to: 

• plan, manage or monitor agriculture, ecology, conservation, forestry, environmental assessment, water supplies, urban spread, transport, telecommunications, recreation and mineral extraction
• examine the coincidence of a given species with particular land cover types, make assessments of habitats at risk from a specific development, or look at national distributions of land cover types and how it is affected by other environmental and human factors
• or in combination with other datasets.

Current examples of the application of the UKCEH land cover map include: 

• detection of changing land cover, landscape management, mapping bracken in the context of health studies (bracken supports ticks carrying human disease)
• environmental assessments of motorway extensions, and planning of telecommunication lines.

Historic Digimap provides historical Ordnance Survey maps of Great Britain. The historical mapping is licensed from Landmark Information Group. Historic Digimap offers the following map images, the originals of which were published between 1846 and 1996:

• All available County Series maps at 1:2,500 and 1:10,560 scales

• All available British National Grid maps (1943 to 1996) at 1:1,250, 1:2,500 and 1:10,560/10,000

• Selected Town Plan maps (1848 and 1939) at scales of 1:500, 1:528 and 1:1056

• Over 400,000 geo-referenced digital map images are available for use in GIS and CAD.

• Available coverage of Great Britain varies between the historical map editions. Generally, the 1st editions in each Map Series provide full coverage of Great Britain. The subsequent revisions of each Series tend to have increasingly sparse coverage.

Geology Digimap provides geological maps and data of Great Britain from the British Geological Survey. Available data includes:

• Onshore geology at four scales; 1:10000, 1:25000, 1:50000 and 1:625000.

• Offshore geology with two themes; bedrock and seabed sediments.

• Rock information, including the Lexicon of Named Rock Units and the Onshore Borehole Index.

• Groundwater datasets; geological indicators of flooding, permeability indices and 1:625000 Hydrogeology.

With Geology Digimap you can view and download both licensed and open data from the BGS.

Marine Digimap provides two key marine mapping data products from OceanWise, a leader in the field of marine mapping.

Raster nautical charts are derived from UK Hydrographic Office paper charts and chart panels. This chart dataset comes in two versions: Raster Charts and Raster Charts XL, which excludes land-based features.

Marine themes vector data covers all UK waters. It is a feature-rich dataset derived from authoritative material from the UK Hydrographic Office, as well as comprehensive source data where available.

Marine Digimap has several layers:

• elevation, shipwrecks and obstructions
• industrial facilities, transport, administrative and management units
• geographical regions

Marine data is extensively used in the following projects and industries: 

• offshore engineering
• management of marine and coastal environments
• marine ecology studies
• environmental impact assessments and tourism.

Aerial Digimap provides access to some of the highest quality aerial photography available for Great Britain, created and licensed by Getmapping Ltd. 

Aerial photography has a multitude of uses including backdrop mapping and context for a wide range of studies. Ideal for looking at the reality of a location in great detail, the aerial photography available is 25cm vertical ortho-photography and is available for the whole of Great Britain.

Aerial Digimap has found uses in: 

• coastal zone studies
• archaeology, urban studies and town planning
• historical studies looking at change over time
• habitat change, and much more.

Lidar Digimap offers detailed Lidar data from the Environment Agency, who has been capturing vertical aerial photography data regularly since 2006. 

Lidar data is a very accurate model of the earth’s surface. Vertical aerial photography is an airborne mapping technique, which uses a high-resolution camera mounted vertically underneath the aircraft to capture reflected light in the red, green, blue and for some datasets, near infra-red spectrum. Images of the ground are captured at resolutions between 10cm and 50cm, and ortho-rectified using simultaneous LIDAR and GPS to a high spatial accuracy.

Uses of Lidar data are highly varied, and include:

• the creation of visual effects for virtual reality and film projects
• archaeology
• forestry management
• flood and pollution modelling.