Land Resources Portal

What is the Land Resources Portal?

The Land Resources Portal is a web service established in 2023 to support the mapping of land use capability across New Zealand.

Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research and its predecessor organisations have played a substantial part in New Zealand’s land resource mapping. As custodians of the New Zealand Land Resource Inventory (NZLRI) we have responded to the increase in attention on NZLRI data by creating a new web service for the community of LUC practitioners. Following a stock-take of LUC-related materials and the digitisation of relevant items, the ‘Land Resources Portal’ has being established for convenient information access and download.

The Land Resources Portal has been designed to evolve over time. Content will also be co-created with members of the LUCCS Governance Group, which meets twice a year to discuss priorities and standards for LUC work.

Explore the Land Resources Portal

Explore the Land Resources Portal

Terms & Conditions

Terms & Conditions

Privacy Statement

Privacy Statement

Land Resources Portal

A service for Land Use Capability (LUC) practitioners

In September 2022 the National Policy Statement for Highly Productive Land (NPS-HPL) was released. This targets the safeguarding of New Zealand’s most favourable soils for food and fibre production.
Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research and its predecessor organisations have played a substantial part in New Zealand’s land resource mapping. As custodians of the NZLRI we have responded to the increase in attention resulting from the NPS-HPL's reliance on NZLRI data by creating the Land Resources Portal.

Visit the Land Resources Portal

Coverage: New Zealand

Date: 1960→1990

License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 New Zealand License (BY-NC-ND)

Related Topics

Soil life thumb

Soil life: a diverse hotchpotch underground

Soil is teeming with life, but life in soil has somewhat remained the ‘deep ocean’ of the land: Little is known about the myriad organisms below ground that interact with soil and the wider environment.

Soil basics Soil biodiversity

Regional soil data

Key soil datasets available at the regional level.

Soil data

whenua viz thumb

Whenua Māori Visualisation Tool

This website is intended to help Māori land owners and managers find out more about the physical characteristics, constraints and potential of their whenua Māori.

Māori Mapping

Hill country erosion.

NZLRI development

The first edition NZLRI provides national coverage from mapping between 1973 and 1979 at a scale of 1:63,360. A second edition(1992-1999) included regional upgrades at a scale of 1:50,000. The third edition in 2000 contained a restructured polygon attribute table to allow the core NZLRI to complement the newly created fundamental soil layers with minimal duplication.

2023 update of S-map Online

The December 2023 update of S-map Online provides 538,000 ha approx. of new mapping across 7 regions.

SINDI plant thumb

SINDI – Soil Quality Indicators

A web-based tool designed to help you interpret the quality or health of soil.

Tools Soil quality

Other publications thumb

Other soils publications

Manaaki Whenua Science publications, corporate publications, innovation stories, newsletters incl. NZSSS Soil News, factsheets, books and monographs.

Publications MWLR VSA

Our latest news

12 November 2024

Soil Horizons Issue 33

Our 'Soil Horizons' newsletter communicates our work in soil-related research to stakeholders, customers and colleagues.

Major update to S-map Online released

A major update to S-map Online has been released on 29 August 2024. S-map Online is now at 41.2% of NZ covered and 11M ha in total.

A most amazing story of 100 years of NZ soil survey

Dr Philip John Tonkin has been compiling a comprehensive history of NZ soil survey.

Major update of S-map Online

Notification of a significant nationwide S-map update on 23rd April 2024.

On 10 April 2024, MfE and Stats NZ released the 2024 edition of the 'Our land' report on the state of land and soil in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Soil science – the hole story

Pūtaiao (‘science’ in te reo Māori) is MWLR's quarterly publication showcasing our work.

8 December 2023

2023 update of S-map Online

The December 2023 update of S-map Online provides 538,000 ha approx. of new mapping across 7 regions.

30 November 2023

Land use capability back in the spotlight

A new website to support practitioners in the Land Use Capability (LUC) space.

Find related content

Land use

Back to top