Land Data

The Land Use Map is composed of New Zealand-wide land use classifications (12) nominally at 1 January 1990, 1 January 2008, 31 December 2012 and 31 December 2016 (known as "1990", "2008", "2012" and "2016"). These date boundaries were dictated by the First and Second Commitment Periods of the Kyoto Protocol. The layer can therefore be used to create either a 1990, 2008, 2012 or 2016 land use map depending on what field is symbolised.

The dataset maps areas of winter forage cropping and intensive winter grazing occurring in hill country areas during 2018. Hill country is defined as areas where paddocks have an average slope of greater than 7 degrees. Paddocks are classified into crop type and a measure is provided of the proportion of bare ground within the paddock after grazing.

Land Environments of New Zealand (LENZ) is a classification of fifteen climate, landform, and soil variables chosen for their relevance to biological distributions. Classification groups were derived by automatic classification using a multivariate procedure. Four levels of classification detail have been produced from this analysis, containing 20, 100, 200, and 500 groups respectively.
More information is available from the LENZ web site:
www.landcareresearch.co.nz/databases/lenz/

Areas of LUCAS LUM forests that have been cleared between 2008 and 2020 inclusive. Forest clearing is detected using mosaics of satellite imagery captured over a range of dates; therefore the year of clearing provided is nominal.

A spatial dataset identifying a set of environmental conditions that have potential to inhibit growth of newly-established woody vegetation such that it might not reach a ‘forest’ status (defined as greater than 30% cover of trees of 5 m height) within a 30-40 year timeframe.

Inclusions: temperature, moisture availability, edaphic conditions, coastal exposure, and land instability

Exclusions: herbivory, competition, external gene pools, availability of seed sources and dispersers, and also fire

This ELF layer is designed to provide a concise evidence source to guide decision making regarding the potential for naturally regenerating species to reach the criteria for Kyoto-compliant forest. Due to the variable quality in the source data used to compile this layer it should only be considered to provide guidance and should not be used as authoritative for forest eligibility/ineligibility under any government scheme.

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

Ministry for the Environment, Land Use Carbon Analysis System collection of swaths of LiDAR over planted forests of interest (raw and classified returns) from 2006 to 2015.

INDEX ONLY: These footprints are the index for the 'Sentinel2 2020 Mainland NZ' mosaic. It has been provided to enable users to explore coverage and capture dates of the component imagery. To enquire about ordering the imagery itself, please e-mail lucas[at]mfe.govt.nz. The imagery represented is a 10m, ten-band multispectral, cloud-minimised mosaic of Sentinel 2A and 2B satellite tiles over mainland New Zealand made from scenes captured late-2019/early-2020.

INDEX ONLY: These footprints are the index for the 'Sentinel2 2021 Mainland NZ' mosaic. It has been provided to enable users to explore coverage and capture dates of the component imagery. To enquire about ordering the imagery itself, please e-mail lucas[at]mfe.govt.nz.

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The imagery represented is a 10m, ten-band multispectral, cloud-minimised mosaic of Sentinel 2A and 2B satellite tiles over mainland New Zealand made from scenes captured late-2020/early-2021.

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 15m, six-band multispectral, cloud-minimised mosaics of Landsat 4 satellite scenes over mainland New Zealand captured from late-1988 to early-1993.

The Chatham Islands Land Use Map is composed of 12 land use classifications nominally at 1 January 1990, 1 January 2008, 31 December 2012 and 31 December 2016 (known as "1990", "2008", "2012" and "2016") and was created using broadly the same methodology as was used for mainland LUCAS NZ LUM 2016. These date boundaries were dictated by the First and Second Commitment Periods of the Kyoto Protocol. The layer can therefore be used to create either a 1990, 2008, 2012 or 2016 land use map depending on what field is symbolised.