Improving biodiversity data

Biodiversity data is collected by many different groups in Aotearoa including:

• Ministry for the Environment
• Department of Conservation (DOC)
• Ministry of Primary Industries
• local government
• museums
• Crown Research Institutes
• universities
• mana whenua
• citizen scientists.

Each group contributes differently and monitors and reports different aspects of biodiversity for different purposes. 

Te Mana o te Taiao, our national biodiversity strategy

DOC have led the development of our national biodiversity strategy, Te Mana o te Taiao, which helps to guide these efforts. Direction is also provided by national legislation, and international monitoring and reporting commitments.

Read Te Mana o te Taiao, our national biodiversity strategy [Department of Conservation website].

The Ministry for the Environment helps co-ordinate and support nationally standardised biodiversity data collection, particularly by working with local government.

We provide funding for important national datasets including:

• the Land Cover Database
• data on native forests as part of carbon sequestration reporting
• a variety of biodiversity improvement projects that aim to support the consistency and aggregation of local datasets.

We also work with Statistics New Zealand to report on our biodiversity in our national environmental reports.

Biodiversity data can be collected through a variety of methods, and together these provide us with a national picture on biodiversity.

Field observations

Traditional field observations involve researchers directly measuring and recording biodiversity, including five minute bird counts or vegetation surveys.

Case study : Carbon in forests

As part of the carbon in forests work, we contribute funding for fieldwork in forests across New Zealand so that changes through time can be tracked. Forest carbon is reported in the NZ Greenhouse Gas Inventory and the biodiversity data contributes to our understanding of New Zealand’s forest.

Read New Zealand’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory.

Wildlife cameras

Wildlife cameras can provide useful information on species abundance, distribution and activity. Advances in computing are making it easier to process of the large amounts of footage.

Environmental DNA

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is particularly valuable in freshwater environments, allowing for detailed analysis of species presence and population health via a simple water sample.

Desktop approaches

Desktop approaches include using remote sensing and satellite data, including LiDAR, which provide broad-scale information on ecosystems and habitats. The resolution and coverage from these tools is increasing, and advances in computing are reducing the processing and analyses costs. 

Land use and land cover change is an important driver of biodiversity loss in New Zealand.

See our Land Pages for information about improvements to data.

It is important for us to understand the abundance, distribution and threat status of our species. This helps inform where we have experienced historical losses, and monitor for any further changes.

The data collection is mainly led by DOC and local government, with contributions from:

• museums
• Crown Research Institutes
• universities
• citizen scientists
• mana whenua.

We are supporting the exploration and uptake of new opportunities. Projects we have funded include:

• exploring the use of environmental DNA (eDNA) in biodiversity monitoring
• councils piloting uploading their biodiversity data to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), a free and open access database

Ecosystems are the building blocks of our natural environment. The types of ecosystems we have vary from north to south and lowland to alpine. Different ecosystems have experienced different levels of pressures past and current. To maintain our biodiversity we need representation across ecosystems.

Building a national ecosystem typology

Our main data improvement focus is to ensure that New Zealanders have a common language to describe ecosystem units. For this we are funding a large project across marine, freshwater and land environments to create a national ecosystem typology.

Read more on building a national ecosystem typology.

Red-listing process for ecosystems

We are supporting DOC with their work to develop a red-listing process for ecosystems. This would enable us to describe the threat level for different ecosystems, in much the same way as we can describe a species as endangered or not threatened.