There are 3 levels as follows:

1. Land Management Suites (LMS). These define broad land groupings based on homogenous areas of rock, soil, landform-slope, erosion and climate. These are defined by reclassifying the New Zealand Land Resource Inventory (NZLRI) Land Use Capability Units (see entry 5.17 Land Use Capability Units).
2. Land use types. This uses the national Land Cover Database, with additional regional scale information (eg types of pastoral farming, exotic forest age classes) to identify regional land uses.
3. Land management units. This more detailed mapping combines land management suites with land use. This allows "at risk" land with particular physical attributes (land management suites) and land uses (land use types) to be identified.

The information used to define the categories in each level of the system came from a wide variety of sources. In addition to the formal databases (listed under "contributing databases") information came from re-classified SPOT satellite imagery (for regional land cover); and a variety of regional sources including regional data on storms and erosion.

• soil intactness
• soil health

In 1997, Landcare Research New Zealand Limited was commissioned by Ministry for the Environment to undertake a project to develop a proposed national framework for land based monitoring, using the Bay of Plenty as a model.

Concurrently, in 1997, soil scientists from different organisations in New Zealand, were developing methodologies for soil health, which have been used by the SLM Project Team in the proposed soil health monitoring framework.

1. Environment Bay of Plenty
2. Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research

Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research
Private Bag 11052
Palmerston North
Phone +64 (6) 3567154
Facsimile +64 (6) 3559230
Email: stephensp@landcare.cri.nz
Harmsworthg@landcare.cri.nz

Regional Monitoring @ 1:50, 000

1. Detailed LUC units were grouped into LUC Suites. This first subdivision delineated the EBOP landscape into coarse homogenous land type/soils areas defined by landform, rock-type, soils, erosion type, indigenous vegetation and climate.
2. Each LUC Suite was subdivided using field management information such as erosion risk related to slope, rock-type and landform (e.g. subdivision into arable and non-arable land within a LUC suite), land behaviour and risk under cropping, land behaviour and risk under pastoral agriculture, land suitability, productivity, degree of physical limitation. Slope information was obtained from the NZLRI but could have been based on Digital Terrain Model (DTM) data (e.g. contour data at an appropriate scale).
3. Based on physical and management criteria, all NZLRI data was reclassified using groupings or sub-division of LUC, slope, soils, erosion, and rock-type information in the GIS database. The resulting product was the Land Management Suite.

• New Zealand Land Cover Database
• New Zealand Land Resource Inventory
• Digital Cadastral Database
• 1:50,000 regional land use and land cover database for Bay of Plenty
• Agribase

The Land Management Suite further subdivides physically based land areas (i.e. similar to land systems) into smaller land areas based on management criteria.

The resulting polygons in the GIS database can be used to show "at risk" areas depending on the issues used to identify risk. Each distinct Land Management Suite requires similar management to alleviate or rectify problems related to soil intactness, soil health, and/or life supporting capacity (e.g. similar soil conservation requirements on similar land-types.).

This involves choosing of representative catchments which can be monitored over time. Monitoring will be linked to Environment BOPs operational and regulatory activities.

Site specific monitoring is driven by specific issues (e.g. vegetation loss on sand dunes). Sites chosen for site specific monitoring are selected to ensure uniformity and representativeness of the issues. The methodology includes detailed aerial photo analysis, and/or field assessment on-site. Site specific monitoring may involve some research.