Computer tool helps planners aid threatened environments
An interactive GIS tool is helping planners identify and set a value on New Zealand’s threatened environments, which in turn can help protect our biodiversity.
Planners need quality advice to prioritise protection eff orts in their day-to-day management of resource consent applications. New Zealand’s coastal, lowland and montane environments have been substantially modified, with considerable loss of indigenous ecosystems. The remaining areas of indigenous vegetation may be highly modified and degraded, but nevertheless support disproportionate numbers of threatened species, habitats and ecosystems.
With clearance of indigenous cover ongoing, protection of those areas that are left becomes more important. The highest rates of loss occur in unprotected areas with the least remaining cover, which exacerbates biodiversity loss.
Landcare Research has produced a “Threatened Environments” tool for identifying environments with much reduced indigenous ecosystems. The tool was developed with end-users including DOC, MfE, Land Information New Zealand, regional councils and the QEII National Trust.
Threatened Environments is an add-on to LENZ (Land Environments of New Zealand), an MfE-funded software product by Landcare Research that combines information on land environments, land cover, protected areas and similar information at a range of scales, from national to local. Threatened Environments shows at a glance how much of any environment remains in native cover and how much is protected – key criteria in determining the significance of remaining indigenous vegetation. It also assigns environments to one of five categories ranging from acutely threatened to not threatened.
The tool can display loss and protection statistics for any area or point, assess priorities for protection and conservation management, and report on biodiversity achievements.
The next step is to make Threatened Environments widely available to LENZ users, including local authorities provided with LENZ by MfE. The Threatened Environments add-on will enable these users to locate priority ecosystems for conservation action, and to report transparently on achievements. Use of a common tool will allow dialogue among agencies and staff on priorities, strategy and management.
Environment Southland is already using Threatened Environments, and Biosecurity Manager Richard Bowman says it puts information at their fingertips and improves the quality of the council’s resource consent decisions.
“It moves us closer to building a picture of where biodiversity values are in the region. It’s great for assigning relative importance to sites, particularly in terms of biodiversity or threatened species.”
Talk to us |
Funding |
| Susan Walker Tel 03 470 7211 
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Landcare Research, MoRST Capability Fund, MfE, DOC |
On the web |
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| http://lenz.landcareresearch.co.nz | |