One of the biggest misconceptions in ecology I come across is the notion that finding reliable GIS data is hard. If that’s what you think, you might want to look away now: I disagree. What is hard, however, is knowing whether the data you've found is actually any good.

Open-source technology is quietly running the world. It's part of the critical infrastructure and hardware that are vital to many of our jobs and most people don’t realise it. Many of my clients use QGIS (mostly as I train people how to use it) and they’re drawn to it because it’s “free” ー not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s accessible and lets you road-test it for nothing before you embed it in your work, so why wouldn’t you?

If you want to see the count (total number) of features you have in a layer you don't have to open your attribute table to see the amount you can do it within your layers panel!

✨It's free data Friday!✨ This week it's Sites of Special Scientific Interest ( SSSI's) & SSSI Impact Risk Zones to help developers, consultants and members of the public, who are preparing to submit a planning application. You can use the SSSI IRZs to consider whether a proposed development is likely to affect a SSSI and choose whether to seek pre-application advice from Natural England. This will allow any potential impacts to be considered within the planning application