# Merestone: SSSI & Habitat Map — Protected sites & desk study > Protected sites & desk study (iPhone/iPad app by LEON NELIO FIGUEIRA.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/merestone-sssi-and-habitat-map/id6801830675 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [LEON NELIO FIGUEIRA](https://appshunter.io/developer/6790868683) - Category: Reference, Navigation - Price: Free with in-app purchases - Age rating: 4+ - Requires: iOS 17.0 · 24 MB - Languages: American English, Dutch, French (France), European Portuguese, European Spanish - Released: 2026-09-01 - Data updated: 2026-09-14 - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/merestone-sssi-and-habitat-map/id6801830675/reviews.md ## What is Merestone? Merestone runs the designated sites search of a desk study and writes the appendix. Drop a pin, set a radius: SSSI, SAC, SPA, Ramsar, ancient woodland and priority habitat in the UK, SAC, SPA, NHA and pNHA in Ireland, by distance, in a dated PDF. Not a survey, not a LERC search. Seven countries, 650+ layers, 80+ free. ON THE MAP, UK • SSSI in England, Scotland and Wales, with unit condition and Impact Risk Zones in England • SAC, SPA and Ramsar across the UK, ASSI in Northern Ireland, nature reserves, National Parks, AONB, National Scenic Areas in Scotland, CRoW access land in England and Wales • Ancient woodland in England, Scotland and Wales; the Priority Habitats Inventory in England, priority habitats in Northern Ireland, Phase 1 in Wales • Scheduled monuments, listed buildings, parks and gardens, battlefields, World Heritage Sites • Flood Zones 2 and 3 in England and Wales, SEPA flood likelihood in Scotland • Nutrient neutrality, LNRS and the BNG register in England, ALC in England and Wales, Scottish conservation areas • Green Belt, TPOs, brownfield land and English conservation areas, from local authority submissions to planning.data.gov.uk, are partial: an empty result is never proof of absence Sources include Natural England, NatureScot, NRW, DAERA, Historic England, HES, Cadw, the EA, SEPA, the Scottish Government, Scottish Forestry, the Forestry Commission and local authority planning data. IRELAND Mostly from NPWS, the EPA, GSI, the National Monuments Service, Tailte Éireann and DHLGH: SAC, SPA, NHA and pNHA, national parks and reserves, Ramsar, water, geology, archaeology, townlands, trails. Not here: OPW flood maps, whose re-use is reserved, the RPS, ACAs or zoning. SEARCH AND PDF 250 m to 20 km, by distance to the nearest edge. OS National Grid in Great Britain, ITM in Northern Ireland and Ireland. The PDF lists each record with distance, direction, source and date; where a source publishes no date, as NatureScot and NRW do not, it says so. Then the layers found empty or not searched, and why. Every UK and Irish layer downloads for offline use except Bird Sightings (recorded), which is live only. The BNG register does not download either: it is a dated snapshot built into the app, always offline, never live. FRANCE, SPAIN, PORTUGAL France, 107 layers. Spain: ZEC and ZEPA nationwide, regional depth only in C. Valenciana, Catalunya, Andalucía. Portugal: ZEC, ZPE, ARPSI floods; no REN, RAN or PDM. NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM, NEW 33 Dutch layers in RD, radius to 25 km. Natura 2000-gebieden is free. No omgevingsplan or bestemmingsplan, so the app cannot say what a parcel may be used for; no Natuurnetwerk Nederland, no houtopstanden; municipal monuments only as a Wkpb restriction; European Netherlands only. 174 Belgian layers in Lambert 2008: Wallonia's plan de secteur, Brussels' PRAS, the Flemish DSI, plus Natura 2000, water, flooding and heritage. Four Natura 2000 layers are free. SPECIES RECORDS Sixteen layers draw live GBIF records, CC0 and CC BY only, at most 300 per view, never downloadable, out of the radius search and the PDF: a first look, never an inventory or evidence of absence. Non-commercial data is not drawn. BUYING One purchase per country covers iPhone, iPad, Mac and Watch, and nothing renews. Or one subscription for every country, including any added later. Free in each country: the statutory core and a 250 m search; the PDF and offline downloads need the purchase. DATA AND LIMITS Each layer under its publisher's own licence (OGL v3.0 for most of the UK, CC BY 4.0 for all of Ireland, Licence Ouverte, the Flemish and Dutch model licences, CC0 or CC BY for species), printed in the PDF; a few carry extra conditions. Not included: Local Wildlife Sites, a flood layer for Northern Ireland, public rights of way, Scottish Core Paths, BGS geology. TERMS OF USE https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy policy: https://leonfigueira.github.io/fieldmark-site/privacy.html ## Pricing and in-app purchases Base price: Free. **Subscriptions** | Subscription | Price | Period | | --- | --- | --- | | Worldwide Monthly | $9.99 | per month | | Worldwide Quarterly | $22.99 | per 3 months | | Worldwide Yearly | $59.99 | per year | **One-time purchases** | Purchase | Price | Type | | --- | --- | --- | | Merestone Pro Spain | $22.99 | one-time | | Merestone Pro Portugal | $17.99 | one-time | | Merestone Pro Iberia | $29.99 | one-time | | Merestone Pro France | $24.99 | one-time | | Merestone Pro Belgium | $24.99 | one-time | | Merestone Pro Low Countries | $34.99 | one-time | | Merestone Pro Netherlands | $22.99 | one-time | ## Version history (last 5 releases) ### 2.2.2 — 2026-09-13 Corrections, and some polish. • Dutch monument records read as names now, not bare register numbers. • About and Server status credit each publisher properly, with the licence they actually granted. • A search answered from your downloads says so on screen, not only in the report. • Setup and the preset tiles are laid out for iPad rather than stretched from a phone. • The same designation is now named the same way either side of a border. • Belgium gains 5 km and 10 km search radii. • Wording corrections throughout Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese. ### 2.2.1 — 2026-09-12 Every screen read again, in all five languages. • A radius search in which every layer failed could read as a clean site. It now says exactly what could not be checked — on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Watch. • Thirty-two Brussels and Azores layers could never be downloaded, so Belgium and Portugal could never finish an offline pack. Fixed. • A Dutch download stored 168 of the 170 Habitatrichtlijn sites and reported itself complete. • Desk studies now count every feature found, not one per name — dense layers were under-reporting badly. • The two-country bundle now appears on every screen that sells a country, not just one. • Dutch place-name search returned sites that did not match what you typed. • A great many corrections to the French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese, and to what the app says about each country's data. ### 2.2.0 — 2026-09-08 The Netherlands and Belgium are here, and Merestone now covers seven countries. The app and its desk-study PDF also speak Dutch, alongside English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. For UK and Irish work nothing moves: the same map, the same radius search, the same report. THE NETHERLANDS 33 layers for the European Netherlands, from RVO, Rijkswaterstaat, the Kadaster, RIVM, the RCE, Informatiehuis Water and the waterschappen, largely through PDOK. Waterkeringen and beschermingszones from the waterschappen, KRW water bodies, waterwingebieden and grondwaterbeschermingsgebieden. The Wkpb register of public-law restrictions. Rijksmonumenten, beschermde stads- en dorpsgezichten and the Archeologische Monumentenkaart. 6 presets, radius search to 25 km, coordinates in RD, the Rijksdriehoeksstelsel. Natura 2000-gebieden is free for good. One payment, and nothing renews. Read this before you buy it. There is no omgevingsplan or bestemmingsplan layer, because those rules live in DSO omgevingsdocumenten and no queryable service exists, so the app cannot tell you what a parcel may be used for. There are no provincial layers, so no Natuurnetwerk Nederland, and no houtopstanden. Municipal monuments appear only as a Wkpb restriction, which names the grounds and the municipality and never the building. Coverage is the European Netherlands, so not Bonaire, Sint Eustatius or Saba. BELGIUM 174 layers across Wallonia, Brussels and Flanders, 3 of them species layers covering the whole country. Wallonia's plan de secteur with its prescriptions and périmètres, Brussels' PRAS, PPAS and PAD, and the Flemish DSI with bestemmingen, plancontouren and overdrukken, alongside Natura 2000, water, flooding and heritage in each region. Each region comes from the service its own administration publishes, and keeps that administration's own French or Dutch names. Flooding comes region by region, because three services publish it, and nothing is merged into a common legend: a plan de secteur zone is not turned into a Flemish bestemming, because it is not one. Four layers are free for good, the Natura 2000 core of each region. 9 presets, radius search to 20 km, coordinates in Lambert 2008. One payment, and nothing renews. A Low Countries bundle covers the Netherlands and Belgium together, as Iberia does Spain and Portugal. SPECIES RECORDS Sixteen layers across the app now draw occurrence records from GBIF, filtered to CC0 and CC BY only and capped by GBIF at 300 records per view. They cannot be downloaded, and they are left out of the radius search and out of the PDF, because they are a first look and never an inventory. A record the publisher locates only to a grid square of a kilometre or more is now drawn as a circle of that stated radius rather than as a dot, so the map never claims more precision than the record holds. Records shared under a non-commercial licence are not drawn at all, and in the Netherlands that includes the NDFF, so blank ground there can mean the observation was not open, not that nobody looked. There is no NDFF link and none is possible: that data is licensed non-commercially. The United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and France are each still a one-time purchase, and one subscription still covers every country, including any added later. FIXED IN THIS VERSION England's Flood Zone 2 and 3 now read the Environment Agency's current Flood Map for Planning. The older service is still live but holds about 18% fewer Flood Zone 3 polygons, so a site near a zone edge could draw clear when it is not. Spain and Portugal's designated areas move to the EEA's current inventory: 94 Spanish and 3 Portuguese protected areas were missing. Notes that said a dataset is not published now say it is not in the app yet. Bathing water shows the Directive's own quality classes rather than a raw code. The PDF credits share-alike sources under their own terms. Licence tags no longer break a letter at a time. ### 2.1.0 — 2026-09-03 France is here. Every environmental and planning designation in metropolitan France and Corsica, from the MNHN, the IGN, the Geoportail de l'urbanisme, Georisques, the Sandre and the OFB, in French. The desk-study PDF is better everywhere. The map now draws the designations it found, with a key that matches it. A new summary lists the nearest record in each layer, so nothing important is buried. Sections are bookmarked, the grid is named, and the small print is readable in print. Apple Watch now shows the layers you have paid for, not just the free ones. ### 2.0.0 — 2026-09-01 Ireland, Spain and Portugal join the UK: 372 official layers across four countries, in English, Spanish and Portuguese. New Farming preset for Ireland, bathing waters for every UK nation, and a desk-study search that reads distances in each country's own grid. Optional: subscribe to every country at once. The one-time purchases stay, and what you buy stays yours. ## Apps similar to Merestone | App | Rating | Price | Category | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [DeepL Translate](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/deepl-translate/id1552407475) | 4.8 (13,276) | Free | Reference | ## More apps by LEON NELIO FIGUEIRA - [Runlow: AI Usage Meter](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/runlow-ai-usage-meter/id6790868681) - [Recast: Convert & Compress](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/recast-convert-and-compress/id6795738751) - [Reprompt: Teleprompter](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/reprompt-teleprompter/id6800161736) - [Refast: 16:8 Fasting Timer](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/refast-168-fasting-timer/id6800549217) - [Gridsong: Music Maker](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/gridsong-music-maker/id6803742432) All apps by LEON NELIO FIGUEIRA: https://appshunter.io/developer/6790868683 --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-14.*