List of all metadata reports |  This report's TOC |  Previous Page |  Next Page

1.0 Executive summary

This review of national databases for the marine environment is part of a wider Ministry for the Environment project to review different ecological classification systems and databases used for environmental management and reporting. The purpose of this review is to assist the Ministry with further developing and implementing the confirmed Environmental Performance Indicator (EPI) Programme indicators. This review addresses marine environment databases. For the purpose of the EPI Programme the "marine environment" includes the Exclusive Economic Zone as well as terrestrial and aquatic coastal environments.

National databases reviewed cover the following categories :

• general biological databases (This includes various species and ecological databases as well as an adventive biota database)
• fisheries databases (There is an extensive set of databases including: catch-effort data; scientific observer data; trawl, longline, aerial sighting, and tag data)
• wildlife databases (This includes OSNZ Atlas of Bird Distribution, and the national bird banding scheme)
• physical databases (This includes LINZ bathymetric and nautical charts, scientific data from surveys, climate, marine oil spills, ocean currents, salinity and temperature, satelite data, wave data and sediment data)
• integrated physical and biological databases (NIWA estuaries database)
• protected areas

Information on each database is presented using a three-part template that includes a technical and a management evaluation.

There are many marine environment databases, especially for fisheries. It is likely that some of the databases could be used to monitor biodiversity trends in the marine environment to a greater extent than is currently occurring.

While the focus of this review was on national level databases, this was not sufficient to provide a true indication of the marine environment databases that could be relevant to the EPI Programme. A selection of marine environmental databases from Auckland Regional Council, Environment Bay of Plenty, Environment Waikato and Environment Southland were also reviewed (not to the same intensity as the national databases) to provide an indication of the marine datasets that exist in at least some regions. A full review of all marine databases held by local authorities would need to be carried out as a separate project.