World Data - Page 8

The New Zealand River Environment Classification (REC) organises information about the physical characteristics of New Zealand's rivers. Individual river sections are mapped according to physical factors such as climate, source of flow for the river water, topography, and geology, and catchment land cover eg, forest, pasture or urban. Sections of river that have similar ecological characteristics can then be grouped together, no matter where they are.

This information is mapped for New Zealand's entire river network - over 425,000 kilometres of river. Different types of rivers respond differently to the pressures placed on them - the REC can be used to highlight the most appropriate management tools and approaches to reduce these pressures for each river type. Information from the classification is used to develop policy, assess the environment, and report on the quality of river water.

Stream order is the numerical position of a tributary or section of a river within the entire network. Headwater streams are assigned a stream order of 1. When two tributaries of the same stream order meet, the order increments by one for the next section downstream. However, if two sections meet where one section has higher order than the other, the next section downstream has the same order as the highest upstream section.

The User Guide is available from data.mfe.govt.nz/document/123-rec-user-guide-2010/ . Additional metadata can be found at www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/ser/metadata/env-clas... .

The ocean waters surrounding New Zealand vary in temperature from north to south. They interact with heat and moisture in the atmosphere and affect our weather. Long-term changes and short-term variability in sea-surface temperatures can affect marine processes, habitats, and species. Some species may find it hard to survive in changing environmental conditions.

This layer shows annual average sea surface temperature for 2011 as part of the data series for years 1993 to 2013.

NIWA’s sea-surface temperature archive is derived from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) satellite data it receives from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The archive provides high spatial (approximately 1km) and high temporal (approximately 6-hourly in cloud-free locations) resolution estimates of sea-surface temperatures over the New Zealand region, dating from January 1993. Uddstrom and Oien (1999) and Uddstrom (2003) describe the methods used to derive and validate the data.

This dataset relates to the "Annual average sea-surface temperature" measure on the Environmental Indicators, Te taiao Aotearoa website.

Geometry: grid
Unit: degrees Celsius

Further information can be found in:
Uddstrom, MJ (2003). Lessons from high-resolution satellite SSTs. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 84(7), 896–897.
Uddstrom, MJ, & Oien, NA (1999). On the use of high resolution satellite data to describe the spatial and temporal variability of sea surface temperatures in the New Zealand region. Journal of Geophysical Research (Oceans) 104, chapter 9, 20729–20751.

The New Zealand River Environment Classification (REC) organises information about the physical characteristics of New Zealand's rivers. Individual river sections are mapped according to physical factors such as climate, source of flow for the river water, topography, and geology, and catchment land cover eg, forest, pasture or urban. Sections of river that have similar ecological characteristics can then be grouped together, no matter where they are.

This information is mapped for New Zealand's entire river network - over 425,000 kilometres of river. Different types of rivers respond differently to the pressures placed on them - the REC can be used to highlight the most appropriate management tools and approaches to reduce these pressures for each river type. Information from the classification is used to develop policy, assess the environment, and report on the quality of river water.

Stream order is the numerical position of a tributary or section of a river within the entire network. Headwater streams are assigned a stream order of 1. When two tributaries of the same stream order meet, the order increments by one for the next section downstream. However, if two sections meet where one section has higher order than the other, the next section downstream has the same order as the highest upstream section.

Additional metadata can be found at www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/ser/metadata/env-clas... .

Note: Metadata relates to the mosaicked imagery. This layer has been provided to enable users to explore coverage and capture dates of the imagery. To enquire about ordering the imagery, please e-mail lucas[at]mfe.govt.nz.

This imagery is 10m, four-band multispectral, cloud-minimised mosaics of SPOT 5 satellite scenes over New Zealand areas of interest captured late-2010/early-2011.

The imagery is only available to NZ "All-of-Government" agencies. Eligible agencies include central (Crown), regional and local government, universities and CRIs. Agencies contracted to do the work of any of these bodies may be granted limited access at the discretion of the imagery licensor, Airbus Defence and Space, Australia.

New Zealand’s four million km2 marine environment is diverse, with a range of coastal habitats and offshore seabed environments. There are also many marine species unique to New Zealand. Marine protected areas conserve or manage some of these unique habitats and species, while a range of other tools also provide marine protection. We report on the area covered by these tools as an indirect measure to understand the state of the marine environment.
Seamount (underwater mountain area) closures are one of the marine protection tools used. They are designated areas in the exclusive economic zone, which extends to the 200 nautical mile limit. Seamount closures protect underwater mountain areas through the prohibition of all trawling activity. There are some areas where seamount closures overlap with benthic protection areas. In these cases the seamount closure restrictions apply.

The Stock Exclusion Low Slope Land 2020 layer identified areas of "low slope land" as defined in the Resource Management (Stock Exclusion) Regulations 2020 when the regulation was first gazetted in 2020. In December 2022 the dataset was superseded by the Stock Exclusion Low Slope Land 2022 layer.

The layer shows the land parcels, or part parcels, defined as low slope land. These areas have a mean slope is less than or equal to 10 degrees. Parcels with a parcel intent of "ROAD" are excluded. Areas of lakes, ponds, settlements and urban parkland, as defined in Land Cover Database 5, are also excluded. Areas of low-slope grassland and annual cropland within high-slope parcels are also included in the Stock Exclusion Low Slope Land extent.

This layer is the total rainfall for the year 2016, summed from interpolated daily rainfall, in mm, not the average.

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More information on this dataset and how it relates to our environmental reporting indicators and topics can be found in the attached data quality pdf.

Note: Metadata relates to the mosaicked imagery. This layer has been provided to enable users to explore coverage and capture dates of the imagery. To enquire about ordering the imagery, please e-mail lucas[at]mfe.govt.nz.

This imagery is a 15m, six-band multispectral, cloud-minimised mosaic of Landsat 8 satellite scenes over mainland New Zealand made from scenes captured late-2014/early-2015.

Land use that results in a change from indigenous to exotic cover can cause biodiversity loss and reduce functioning of ecosystems. Using more land for agriculture, forestry, and urbanisation is the main driver reducing indigenous land cover across New Zealand.

Column headings:
area_ha = area of land cover measured in hectares

This dataset relates to the "Land use" measure on the Environmental Indicators, Te taiao Aotearoa website.

The Marine Environment Classification (MEC), a GIS-based environmental classification of the marine environment of the New Zealand region, is an ecosystem-based spatial framework designed for marine management purposes.

Several spatially-explicit data layers describing the physical environment define the MEC. A physically-based classification was chosen because data on these physical variables were available or could be modelled, and because the pattern of the physical environment is a reasonable surrogate for biological pattern, particularly at larger spatial scales. Classes within the classification were defined using multivariate clustering methods. These produce hierarchical classifications that enable the user to delineate environmental variation at different levels of detail and associated spatial scales.