A national, multi-date digital land-cover classification recording changes in vegetation, built surfaces, water and other land-cover classes.
New Zealand's Land Cover Database maps land cover across the country at successive observation dates. It distinguishes land cover, such as forest, pasture, wetlands and built surfaces, from the purposes for which land is used. Its GIS polygons support comparisons through time, environmental reporting, ecological analysis and regional planning.
The first LCDB used satellite imagery captured in 1996–97. The revised LCDB 1_2 was released in 2001; corrected LCDB 1C and LCDB 2, representing imagery from 2001–02, were released in July 2004. Earlier classifications, polygon boundaries and later revisions must be understood separately when interpreting change. Terralink is credited in the contemporary LCDB documentation.
Manaaki Whenua released LCDB version 5 in February 2020, covering land cover observed in late 2018. That version distinguished 33 categories. Manaaki Whenua developed it with government funding from the Ministry for the Environment, Te Uru Rākau within the Ministry for Primary Industries, and the Department of Conservation. The dataset's successive versions show changes in imagery sources, classification and analytical methods as well as actual changes on the ground.