The New Zealand Land Resource Inventory (NZLRI) is a national database of physical land resource information. It comprises two sets of data compiled using stereo aerial photography, published and unpublished reference material, and extensive field work:
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An inventory of five physical factors (rock type, soil, slope, present type and severity of erosion, and vegetation). A 'homogeneous unit area' approach is used to record the five physical factors simultaneously to a level of detail appropriate for presentation at a scale of 1:50,000.
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A Land Use Capability (LUC) rating of the ability of each polygon to sustain agricultural production, based on an assessment of the inventory factors above, climate, the effects of past land use, and the potential for erosion. The NZLRI covers the country in 11 regions, each with a separate LUC classification.
The first edition NZLRI provides national coverage from mapping between 1973 and 1979 at a scale of 1:63,360. A limited revision regional upgrade of the north Waikato area was completed at a scale of 1:63,360 in 1983. Second edition NZLRI regional upgrades at a scale of 1:50,000 have been completed for Northland, Wellington, Marlborough and Gisborne-East Cape. Third edition NZLRI layers contained a restructured polygon attribute table to allow the core NZLRI to complement the newly created fundamental soil layers with minimal duplication.
