The River Environment Classification (REC) is a system that classifies New Zealand's rivers according to their physical properties at a range of spatial scales. The development of REC has been supported by The Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and various regional councils to provide a spatial framework for environmental monitoring and reporting and river management.
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.
Supplemental Information
The River Environment Classification User Guide contains a comprehensive guide to the REC databases and uses. Updated in May 2010. ISBN 0-478-18919-2 ME Number 499
Time Period of Content
Time Period Information
Single Date/Time
Calendar Date
2004
Currentness Reference
publication date
Status
Progress
Complete
Maintenance and Update Frequency
None planned
Spatial Domain
Bounding Coordinates
West Bounding Coordinate
173.745249
East Bounding Coordinate
175.076433
North Bounding Coordinate
-38.720585
South Bounding Coordinate
-39.899986
Keywords
Theme
Theme Keyword
River
Theme Keyword
environment
Theme Keyword
classification
Place
Place Keyword
New Zealand
Use Constraints
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand.
Point of Contact
Contact Information
Contact Organization Primary
Contact Organization
Ministry for the Environment
Contact Address
Address Type
physical address
Address
23 Kate Sheppard Place
City
Wellington
Country
New Zealand
Contact Electronic Mail Address
info@mfe.govt.nz
Data Set Credit
Crown Copyright 2004
Native Data Set Environment
Microsoft Windows XP Version 5.1 (Build 2600) Service Pack 3; ESRI ArcCatalog 9.3.0.1770
