About

The Natural Capital Tool ('the NCT') is a free and easy-to-use, geospatial tool that aims to facilitate decision makers to take a natural capital approach to land management in Scotland. A natural capital approach is when the full range of benefits that we receive from nature are taken into consideration within the decision-making process.

The key features of the NCT are as follows: natural capital baseline mapping, ecosystem service capacity and demand mapping, habitat connectivity mapping, landscape-scale opportunity mapping, and scenario planning. Changes in ecosystem service provision are quantified through relative, biophysical and economic methods (where applicable).

Glossary

Natural capital refers to the elements of nature that hold societal value, such as habitats, ecosystems, and animal/plant species. Natural capital includes both the living and non-living aspects of ecosystems.

Ecosystem services are the benefits that natural capital provides to people, such as insect pollination, flood mitigation, and carbon sequestration.

A natural capital approach is when the full range of benefits that nature provides are considered within decision making.

Habitats are natural environments in which certain animal and plant species live. In the NCT, the habitat baseline shows the habitats present on your site (e.g., cultivated land, woodland, grassland, wetland, ponds, etc.).

Habitat networks are areas of 'usable space' that species associated with a particular habitat can move through.

Interventions refer to the specific practice you want to implement within the tool, e.g., woodland planting or grassland restoration.

Uplift refers to the change seen in ecosystem services before and after interventions.

Polygons refer to selected areas of land within the tool. Polygons can be selected from the habitat baseline map or drawn as an intervention.

FAQs

Who is the Natural Capital Tool for?

The NCT is aimed at any decision maker who is interested in exploring how to integrate natural capital approaches into the management of their land. Potential users include farmers/crofters, local authorities, landscape-scale restoration projects, consultants, and many others. The NCT was co-designed with a wide range of stakeholders spanning many sectors and industries to ensure that it is relevant, useful and accessible to different types of users.
The NCT applies exclusively to Scotland, covering both the mainland and the extent of Scotland’s islands.
To see a list of updates and more information about the NCT version history, see Appendix 3: Natural Capital Tool (Beta) - Version updates in the Methodology Report.
Yes. By creating an account in the NCT, you will be able to save your progress and return to your project. The sites you have created/uploaded and the interventions you have created will be saved. From the main tool page, click My Account to view your saved scenarios and sites.
You cannot currently export spatial files or images from the NCT. You can export a shareable and printable HTML report in step 4 of the NCT. This report includes baseline information about your site and a summary of outputs from the NCT.
Yes, you can upload geospatial files to use as your site boundary and/or areas of your interventions. Click the Upload button in Step 1 to upload a site boundary or click the Upload Intervention Area in Step 3 to upload a file. Please note that multi-polygons are not currently accepted for upload – each intervention must be uploaded separately.

Geospatial files can be up to 5MB in size. The NCT supports upload of polygon data in one of the following formats:
  • Geopackage (.gpkg)
  • GeoJson (.json)
  • Shapefile (.shp, .shx, .dbf, .prj)
  • Mapinfo TAB (.tab, .dat, .map, .id)
Shapefile and Mapinfo TAB datasets consist of the listed files – to upload these to the tool you need to ensure the component files are zipped first.

If you are having difficulty uploading a file that meets these criteria, please email natcaptool@nature.scot.
Boundaries uploaded to the Natural Capital Tool must consist of a single polygon. Multiple-polygon and multi-polygon datasets currently cannot be accepted, and you will receive an error if you try to upload one of these datasets.

If you are unsure what sort of data you are uploading, we recommend checking it first in a GIS package like QGIS. A dataset containing multiple polygons will have more than one row in the attribute table, as well as multiple polygons in the map view. Note that sometimes polygons can be drawn on top of each other, so even if the map looks like it only has a single polygon it is worth double checking the attribute table.screenshot of GIS software showing a multi-polygon dataset with multiple rows in the attribute tableIn the case of a multi-polygon you will see multiple polygons in the map view but only a single row in the attribute table.screenshot of GIS software showing a multi-polygon dataset with a single row in the attribute tableTo solve this problem you need to either:
  1. Create a new dataset containing a single boundary that encompasses the entire area of interest, or,
  2. Create a new dataset for each boundary and upload these as separate scenarios. You can do this in QGIS by selecting each feature in the attribute table individually and exporting it to a new file.
Yes, you can upload your own geospatial file to view in the NCT. In Step 2, click the Upload button (next to the Layer Viewer) and select a file. Only one geospatial file can be uploaded to the Layer Viewer.

Files can be up to 5MB in size. The NCT supports upload of polygon data in one of the following formats:
  • Geopackage (.gpkg)
  • GeoJson (.json)
  • Shapefile (.shp, .shx, .dbf, .prj)
  • Mapinfo TAB (.tab, .dat, .map, .id)
Shapefile and Mapinfo TAB datasets consist of the listed files – to upload these to the tool you need to ensure the component files are zipped first.

If you are having difficulty uploading a file that meets these criteria, please email natcaptool@nature.scot.
The ecosystem service and habitat network models are described in the Ecosystem service models section of the Methodology Report. Values for each habitat type are listed in the Habitat Lookup (see the Documentation section of this page). To access the R scripts for each model, please visit our Github repository: https://github.com/Scottish-Natural-Heritage/NaturalCapitalTool.

For a complete list of geospatial data and maps used in the NCT ecosystem service models and habitat baseline, see Appendix 1 – Licensing statement in the Methodology Report.
The habitat baseline is a bespoke habitat map created for the NCT. It is a combination of OS MasterMap and other habitat data specific to Scotland (e.g. Scottish Crop Map, Habitat Map of Scotland, etc.). See the Environmental baseline section of the Methodology Report for the full list of datasets and classification steps used to create the habitat baseline.

For a complete list of geospatial data and maps used in the NCT ecosystem service models and habitat baseline, see Appendix 1 – Licensing statement in the Methodology Report.
We respect your right to have your personal data deleted at any time.
If you would like to delete your Natural Capital Tool account, please email our support team at support+nct@eolasinsight.com using the email address associated with your account.
Once we receive your request, we will:
  1. Verify your identity to ensure the request is legitimate.
  2. Manually remove your account and related personal information from our systems.
  3. Confirm by email once the deletion has been completed.
Please note that in some cases we may be required to retain certain information for legal, security, or compliance purposes. Any data that cannot be deleted will be anonymised wherever possible.
If you have any questions about this process, our team is always happy to help.
We are aware that sharing data is understandably a source of anxiety for land managers, particularly for those within an agricultural context. We want to reassure users that:
• Boundaries held as a geospatial object will not be attached to specific land users or landowners
• No specific boundary or personal scenarios inputted into the tool will be used to drive policy change, unless express consent is given from the user (e.g. the user is piloting the tool)
• Scenarios are not attached to any form of payment or subsidy, such as the Basic Payment Scheme or Agri-Environment Climate Scheme

If you would like to read our Privacy Notice in full, click here.

Documentation

Watch the tool in action