"The pressure from animal and plant pests is one of the biggest threats to biodiversity in the land environment. Pest predators (such as stoats and possums) eat eggs, birds, lizards, insects, and snails. Other animal pests (such as deer and goats) damage and kill trees and other plants and can compete with indigenous animals for the plants’ fruit and...

"This data identified areas in the South Island that have been classified as being the most productive for growing food. It supports most crops across New Zealand. Expanding lifestyle blocks and urban areas reduce the availability of high-class land for commercial crop growing, and this land is unlikely to be returned to primary production. This affects...

"The pressure from animal and plant pests is one of the biggest threats to biodiversity in the land environment. Pest predators (such as stoats and possums) eat eggs, birds, lizards, insects, and snails. Other animal pests (such as deer and goats) damage and kill trees and other plants and can compete with indigenous animals for the plants’ fruit and...

"Annual rainfall is the total accumulated rain over one year. Rain is vital for life, including plant growth, drinking water, river ecosystem health, and sanitation. Floods and droughts affect our environment, economy, and recreational opportunities. This dataset shows annual average rainfall across New Zealand for 2008 as part of the data series for...

"Annual rainfall is the total accumulated rain over one year. Rain is vital for life, including plant growth, drinking water, river ecosystem health, and sanitation. Floods and droughts affect our environment, economy, and recreational opportunities. This dataset shows annual average rainfall across New Zealand for 2009 as part of the data series for...

"The pressure from animal and plant pests is one of the biggest threats to biodiversity in the land environment. Pest predators (such as stoats and possums) eat eggs, birds, lizards, insects, and snails. Other animal pests (such as deer and goats) damage and kill trees and other plants and can compete with indigenous animals for the plants’ fruit and...

Lightning is the discharge of electricity, from thunderstorms, that equalises areas of positive and negative charge, for example, between a storm cloud and the ground. Thunderstorms form as a result of rapidly rising air with a high moisture content (humidity). On average, 1 in 10 lightning discharges strikes the ground (or sea) (Metservice, 2015)....

"Annual rainfall is the total accumulated rain over one year. Rain is vital for life, including plant growth, drinking water, river ecosystem health, and sanitation. Floods and droughts affect our environment, economy, and recreational opportunities. This dataset shows annual average rainfall across New Zealand for 2013 as part of the data series for...

"Sunshine is important for our health and recreation, and for the environment. It is also important for our agriculture-based economy, for example, for plant growth. This dataset shows average annual sunshine hours across New Zealand for years 1972 to 2013. The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) mapped mean annual sunshine hours...

Land Environments of New Zealand (LENZ) is a classification of fifteen climate, landform, and soil variables chosen for their relevance to biological distributions. Classification groups were derived by automatic classification using a multivariate procedure. Four levels of classification detail have been produced from this analysis, containing 20, 100,...

Soil moisture is important for plant growth. A lack of moisture content over a growing season is a good indicator of drought, which can have social, environmental, and economic impacts. Increasing temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns are expected to increase the frequency and intensity of drought in many regions. Growing season soil moisture...

Annual rainfall is the total accumulated rain over one year. Rain is vital for life, including plant growth, drinking water, river ecosystem health, and sanitation. Floods and droughts affect our environment, economy, and recreational opportunities. This dataset shows annual average rainfall across New Zealand for years 1972 to 2013. Annual rainfall is...

"This data records estimated erosion risk for different areas in the North Island. New Zealand experiences high rates of soil erosion. In the North Island, this is mostly due to the historical clearance of forest for agriculture (see also Estimated long-term soil erosion). In contrast, erosion in the South Island is mostly due to natural processes,...