The New Zealand Land Cover Database (LCDB) is a multi-temporal digital thematic map of land cover and land use. Land cover at each of four periods; summer 1996/97, summer 2001/02, summer 2008/09, and summer 20012/13, is both delineated and classified. The land cover classification evolved over the first three periods but compatibility has been maintained. The current version, LCDB v4 (and its predecessor LCDB v3), contains 33 classes. The classification used in LCDB v3 and v4 can be found in the document LCDB2-3CorrelationTable.pdf along with the correlation from the classification used in the earlier version (LCDB v2). This document is available as an attachment to this dataset in the LRIS portal (https://lris.scinfo.org.nz/), and on the LCDB project site (www.lcdb.scinfo.org.nz). The LCDB was designed to be compatible in scale and accuracy with Land Information New Zealand’s 1:50,000 topographic database. The LCDB is intended for use in areas such as state of environmental monitoring, forest and shrub inventory, biodiversity assessment, trend analysis and infrastructure planning. LCDB v4.0 was released in June 2014 and includes non-temporal edits to the 1996/97, 2001/02, and 2008/09 time periods along with new mapping of change up to the summer 2012/13 period. A change layer, “LCDB v4.0 change” is available to indicate both non-temporal and temporal changes made between LCDB v3.3 and LVCDB v4.0, The non-temporal changes include error in earlier mapping. An “authority” attribute is also available in this layer acknowledging the source of the latest mapping of both non-temporal and temporal change. The Chatham Islands, which were available as part of LCDB-2 on a different map projection, have not yet been re-mapped in LCDB v3.0, v3.3, or v4.0.The data is referenced to the New Zealand Transverse Mercator 2000 projection (NZTM2000) which uses the NZ Geodetic Datum 2000 (NZGD2000). Errors in the data due to misclassification (not changes since mapping) or poor delineation can be reported to Landcare Research for inclusion in the next release using the online feedback mechanisms in https://lris.scinfo.org.nz/.
