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Classification systems

Classification systems define and describe environments, allowing like environments to be compared.

Land Environments of New Zealand (LENZ) is a classification of environments mapped across New Zealand's landscape that works at a range of scales and is used as a framework for conservation and resource management. It works on the basis that similar environments tend to support similar groups of plants and animals. LENZ uses this species-environment relationship to group landscapes into sites that are likely to have similar ecosystem potential based on an assessment of local environmental conditions including climate, landform and soils.

The New Zealand River Environment Classification (REC) organises information about the physical characteristics of New Zealand's rivers (for example, their climate, the source of flow for the river water, the geology of the catchment and catchment land cover, e.g. forest, pasture, urban) and maps this information by river segment for New Zealand's entire river network - over 425,000 kilometres of river. This information can then be used as a basis for policy development, environmental monitoring and reporting, and environmental assessments.

The Marine Environment Classification (MEC) classifies New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) into an ecosystem-based, spatial framework mapping variations in physical and biological characteristics. This information can then be used as a framework for inventories of marine resources, assessing environmental effects, policy development and during the design of protected area networks.

The two Land Cover Databases (LCDB 1 & 2) use existing satellite images of New Zealand from 1996/19997 and 2001/2002, and translate them into information describing different types of land cover that exist on the ground. The LDCB then classifies areas of New Zealand into different types of land cover, for example planted forest, indigenous forest, horticulture, and pasture. These land cover classes are then used as a baseline tool for analysis, monitoring and reporting.