23 March, 2007

SCIENTISTS have measured Shetland's coastline and found it to be nearly twice as long as they originally thought.

In 1975 a Professor Flynn calculated Shetland's intricate coast to measure 900 miles. But gathering information for the Scottish Sustainable Marine Environment Initiative, Dr Lorraine Gray has established the actual length to be 1,697 miles.

Dr Gray, a project officer based at Scalloway's NAFC Marine Centre, said: "I based the calculation on the mean high water mark at spring tide from Ordnance Survey maps using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) software.

"At first I was obviously concerned I'd made a mistake in the calculation because the difference between my figure and the original estimate is so huge, almost double. So I contacted other GIS users at the council who couldn't argue with my figures."

Shetland Islands Council's coastal zone manager Martin Holmes said: "This is a lot and could justify the need for more resources, for example in emergency response or management of the coastal environment."

This new measurement means that Shetland accounts for 16 percent of Scotland's 10,246 mile overall coastline, a figure recorded by the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia.