The Whitwhiti Ora: Land Use Opportunities website hosted by Manaaki Whenua is free and stocked full of datasets that provide a broad understanding of the benefits and consequences of a wide range of land use opportunities.
Dr Linda Lilburne, principal scientist in spatial data science at Manaaki Whenua, says a large team of researchers from multiple institutes and scientific disciplines produced these datasets as part of the Land Use Opportunities: Whitiwhiti Ora research programme funded by the Our Land and Water National Science Challenge.
The datasets hosted on the website were created between 2020 and 2023 to provide information on social, environmental, and economic costs and benefits of a range of land use options.
“The datasets provide a snapshot of land-use information across Aotearoa – it is national-scale data, so the purpose is to provide users with an initial
picture of information they can use to undertake their own further research,” says Linda.
For example, the website has datasets on crop suitability and how that changes over time with the impact of climate change.
“You see that in some places where apples, cherries, or avocados grow well now will not be optimal land in the future due to the impacts of climate change – some of the datasets can be quite eye-opening,” says Linda.
The researchers intend that the site will be used by a range of users, such as mana whenua, regional councils, farm advisors, consultants, primary sector groups, investors or anyone keen to find out more about land use opportunities across the motu.
“It is essentially a one-stop-shop for land use opportunity information in Aotearoa,” says Linda.
Each dataset includes information about its limitations and how the data was produced, and most include spatial layers. The information can be downloaded for use in third-party tools such as geographical information systems (GIS). Some of the data has been published on the ‘Our Environment’ section of the site to allow for easier browsing of the spatial layers. The data is open-access and suitable for New Zealand use only. To explore the data supermarket visit: landuseopportunities.nz
