Salmon Stock Assessment Areas boundaries, used by Scottish Government Marine Scotland to demarcate rivers where salmon stocks are assessed under the Salmon Conservation (Scotland) Regulations 2016. The regulations are amended annually to introduce measures for protecting stocks. Assessment Areas are also used for reporting annual statistics obtained from salmon catch returns made by the owners/occupiers/agents of salmon fisheries.
Assessment Areas boundaries are based on Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) river catchments and licensed Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) 1:50,000 data. For 17 salmon Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) the Assessment Areas boundaries include information from Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) (now NatureScot) and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC). Assessment Areas boundaries are a subset of Scottish river catchments, where Marine Scotland has sufficient information on salmon stocks in rivers, or groups of rivers, that their status can be assessed annually and graded for the subsequent fishing season.
Assessment Areas boundaries were updated in 2019 and no further boundary changes have been required. Attributes include annual grade values from 2018 onwards.
Salmon Stock Assessment Areas are available to view as a layer on the Marine Scotland Open Data Network – see Marine Scotland Information pages for Salmon and Sea Trout Fishing at https://marine.gov.scot/themes/salmon-sea-trout-fishing. Boundaries were re-projected from British National Grid (BNG) to WGS84 Web Mercator before upload to Marine Scotland MAPS NMPi.
As the layer was derived by the Scottish Government from a licensed dataset, it is not downloadable or routinely available. It can be shared on request if the user provides evidence that they hold a licence from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) for the 1:50,000 Digital Terrain Model (DTM).
Information on river grades can be found at https://www.gov.scot/publications/salmon-fishing-proposed-river-gradings/pages/overview-and-gradings/