A beach and relict dune system within Largo Bay (SE Fife), Dumbarnie Links lies midway between the village of Lower Largo and Ruddons Point, a half-mile (1 km) south of Drumeldrie. The area has been described as a "rare east-coast example of the shell-rich machair grassland characteristic of the Outer Hebrides", Dumbarnie Links represents one of the largest remaining calcareous dune systems in eastern Scotland and includes the largest area of saltmarsh on the north shore of Firth of Forth.
The dune grassland is rich in lime from the fragments of seashells in the sand. This encourages an unusual ecosystem with plants such as cowslips in the spring, and purple milk vetch, meadow crane's bill, viper's bugloss in the summer, together with a wide variety of birds and diversity of invertebrates including several butterfly species and a great variety of land snails. Part of the Firth of Forth Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), which was designated in 2000, Dumbarnie Links was legally recognised as important as early as 1955. Part of the area is managed as a reserve by the Scottish Wildlife Trust.
