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Biodiversity
Native land cover
This indicator shows the proportion of land covered by native vegetation. It also illustrates the proportion of various native ecosystem types under legal protection.
Two reporting tools are used to report on this indicator:
- New Zealand Land Cover Database (LCDB), which maps all land cover for mainland New Zealand based on satellite imagery.
- Land Environments of New Zealand (LENZ) classification, an environment-based classification of ecosystems, mapped across New Zealand’s landscape.
The indicator is reported using the area of native land cover:
- by Land Cover Database (LCDB) class
- by Land Environments of New Zealand (LENZ) class
- under legal protection.
This includes the estimated change in the area of native land cover in New Zealand between 1997 (LCDB 1) and 2002 (LCDB 2) and the extent of legal protection for each LCDB and LENZ class.
The total number of hectares protected as public conservation land, regional parks and covenants on private land is reported to show the area of vegetation that has been safeguarded.
This information has come from the latest national state of the environment report Environment New Zealand 2007.
Last updated: December 2008
