YthanView is an ongoing project designed to provide improved access for educaters and researchers at the University of Aberdeen to geospatial datsets for the Ythan Estuary and surrounding area (The Sands of Forvie National Nature Reserve (NNR)) in Northeast Scotland, UK. The project originated, in part, with the educational and research work currently undertaken by the Centre for Marine and Coastal Zone Management (CMCZM) including a Learning and Technology Unit (LTU) proposal approved in 2004. YthanView is also designed to complement other work currently being undertaken on the Ythan Estuary and surrounds.

The project is co-ordinated by David R. Green (d.r.green@abdn.ac.uk) under the auspices of the Centre for Marine and Coastal Zone Management (CMCZM), the Aberdeen Institute for Coastal Science and Management (AICSM), and OceanLab at the University of Aberdeen.

If you have any geospatial datasets or information and would like to provide greater access to these datasets/information for the benefit of others working in ther area of the Ythan Estuary, then please contact me at the above email address. To date the project has gathered up a number of geospatial datasets, information and references for work on the Ythan Estuary that involve the application of the geospatial technologies including: remote sensing (aerial, airborne and satellite platforms), Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Global Positioning Systems (GPS), cartography and digital mapping, as well as databases, decision support systems, and the Internet.

Categories of interest are:

• Map/GIS datasets (usually in ESRI shapefile format (.shp))
• Imagery (usually in the form of scanned colour and panchromatic aerial photographs, airborne imagery, and satellite imagery (SPOT and Landsat) - .jpg and ERDAS Imagine .IMG format)
• DEMS (usually in ERDAS Imagine.IMG format)
• Photographs (single and panoramic photographs)
• Dissertations (B.Sc. and M.Sc. dissertations - .DOC (MS-word) or .PDF (Acrobat Reader)