GIS data for Aotearoa | Māori land, place names, imagery, hazards and taiao

Last reviewed: 26 August 2026

Most Māori GIS mahi uses several kinds of evidence at once: Māori-held information, local observations and kōrero, historical records, and public datasets from councils, Crown agencies and research organisations.

Those sources answer different questions. A LINZ parcel is useful for cadastral work. A council hazard layer may be the current published model for a planning process. A historical map may preserve an earlier ingoa wāhi. Local kōrero may carry relationships and meanings that none of those institutional datasets contain.

A useful starting point is the kaupapa. Then add the smallest set of sources that helps answer the question while keeping source, date and context visible.

Before searching for data

Useful questions include:

• What are we trying to understand or decide?
• What whenua, wai, taiao or place relationships are involved?
• What Māori-held or local information already exists?
• What public datasets would add useful context?
• Does the task need exact geometry, or would a broader representation work better?
• What source context needs to stay attached to the result?

This avoids a common GIS habit: downloading whatever is easiest to find and allowing those layers to define the problem.

See Core Māori GIS workflows, Kaupapa Māori GIS and Whakapapa of data.

Find data by task

If you need to...	Start here	Also useful
map Māori land or whenua context	Māori land, Māori Land Court records	LINZ parcels, council planning and hazard layers
use official, historical or local place names	Place names and ingoa wāhi	NZ Gazetteer, historic plans, local iwi or hapū records
find aerial imagery or elevation	LINZ Data Service and LINZ Basemaps	Retrolens, council imagery, LiDAR
understand hazards	regional and city/district council GIS	GeoNet, Earth Sciences NZ, LINZ elevation, local observations
map freshwater, land cover or restoration work	MfE Data Service, LRIS, council environmental data	DOC open data, catchments, monitoring networks and kaitiaki observations
find council planning or infrastructure layers	the relevant council map viewer and open-data portal	REST, WMS, WFS or download services
add statistical boundaries	Stats NZ Geographic Data Service	lookup tables and current boundary vintages
build a broad starter dataset	Matawhenua GIS Mapping	Geospatial Data Catalogue

A clean five-layer project that serves a real kaupapa is usually more useful than hundreds of unexplained layers.

A reliable discovery method

For a public or institutional dataset:

1. Find the provider's current landing page or map viewer.
2. Identify the actual layer or dataset name and what it was created to represent.
3. Read the metadata.
4. Check date, scale, coordinate system, licence and known limitations.
5. Ask what the layer can and cannot say about the kaupapa.
6. Choose a download or service connection that suits the task.
7. Save the provider, dataset name, version and source URL with the project.
8. Keep the original download unchanged.

A web viewer is often useful for discovery. For repeatable analysis, the underlying published dataset or service is usually better where available.

The word authoritative is most useful when it is qualified. A dataset can be authoritative for cadastral boundaries, official statistics or a planning rule without being the cultural authority on whenua, whakapapa or ingoa wāhi.

See Provenance and source checking and Metadata and documentation.

Māori land and whenua

Use Māori land for the detailed workflow.

Typical sources include:

• Pātaka Whenua / Māori Land Court for Court record context
• LINZ Data Service for parcels, survey information and national spatial context
• council planning, rating, hazard and infrastructure layers
• iwi, hapū, trust or whānau information about whenua interests, access, history and kaupapa

A Māori land block, cadastral parcel, rohe, planning zone and project boundary are not interchangeable. They are different representations created for different purposes.

A cadastral layer can be necessary for working with the state land system without becoming the definition of whenua.

See Māori land blocks vs parcels, Whenua mapping and Mana whenua and rohe without hard boundaries.

Place names and ingoa wāhi

Use Place names and ingoa wāhi for practical naming guidance.

Useful starting points include:

• New Zealand Gazetteer for official and recorded names
• LINZ place-name layers for GIS-ready features
• historic survey plans, maps and archival material for earlier names
• local iwi and hapū records for locally held or customary names

Official status is one property of a name. It is not the source of all naming meaning.

Keeping official, local, historical and operational names in separate fields can preserve more of the whakapapa of place than forcing one value into a single name field.

See Who gets to name a place?, Historical Māori maps and Place names and cartographic authority.

Imagery and elevation

Useful sources include:

• LINZ Data Service for aerial imagery and elevation datasets
• LINZ Basemaps for current national imagery and topographic basemaps
• Retrolens for historical aerial photographs
• council open-data portals for local imagery and LiDAR where available

Imagery can support kōrero about change over time, access, land use, restoration and field planning. It is still one view of the whenua from a particular date and sensor.

See Retrolens historical imagery workflows, LiDAR for Māori GIS and the Applications of Imagery for kaupapa Māori GIS mapping StoryMap.

Hazards and resilience

For flood, coastal, landslide and planning hazards, regional and local council models can be useful because they are often more detailed than national layers.

Supporting sources include:

• council hazard viewers and open-data portals
• GeoNet for earthquake and volcanic information
• LINZ elevation and imagery
• Earth Sciences New Zealand services where relevant
• locally held knowledge of access, past events, safe places and how hazards behave on the whenua

Hazard polygons from different councils may represent different events, probabilities, models or planning rules. Keeping those differences visible is more useful than merging them into one apparently consistent layer.

See Disaster and hazard mapping for iwi and Taiao and hazards.

Taiao and environmental data

Useful public starting points include:

• Ministry for the Environment Data Service
• Manaaki Whenua LRIS Portal
• DOC Open Spatial Data
• regional council environmental monitoring portals
• data.govt.nz for cross-agency discovery

These sources can add national or regional evidence. They work best alongside local observations, mātauranga and kaitiaki knowledge where those are part of the kaupapa.

See Taiao mapping, Mahinga kai mapping and Awa as the organising geography.

Council GIS data

Councils often hold useful detail for planning, hazards, infrastructure and environmental monitoring.

A practical method is:

1. open the council's public map viewer
2. identify the layer name
3. find the council's open-data or service catalogue
4. locate the underlying download, feature service, REST endpoint, WMS, WFS or WMTS where available
5. read the metadata and update date
6. save the provider and layer name as well as the URL
7. record what the council layer represents and what context it does not contain

The Accessing Council GIS Maps and Data StoryMap demonstrates the technical method using Bay of Plenty examples.

For the relationship between council data and Māori-held information, see Working with government and councils.

National catalogues

Toitū Te Whenua LINZ

• LINZ Data Service for parcels, topography, elevation, hydrography, imagery and other national datasets
• LINZ Basemaps for imagery and topographic basemaps

Stats NZ

• Geographic data and maps for official geography guidance
• Stats NZ Geographic Data Service for boundaries and lookup tables

Stats NZ geographies are statistical units. They should not be mistaken for rohe or natural communities of relationship.

Ministry for the Environment

• MfE Data Service for environmental datasets and APIs
• Environmental reporting for national reporting context

Department of Conservation

• DOC Open Spatial Data
• DOC maps and data

Land resources

• Manaaki Whenua LRIS Portal
• use the current LCDB release from LRIS rather than relying on an old saved download

Choose the access method

Use a download when offline work, editing, analysis or a fixed version matters.

Use WMS or WMTS for display layers such as imagery or basemaps.

Use WFS, feature services or APIs when live vector features are useful and service availability, performance and version changes can be managed.

The technical access method is separate from decisions about what Māori-held information belongs in the same environment.

Keep provenance with the data

A lightweight register can record:

• dataset or information-group name
• source organisation or source relationship
• kaupapa and intended use
• source link or record reference
• version or currency date
• date obtained or recorded
• licence or agreed conditions where relevant
• access method
• coordinate reference system
• audience or sensitivity where useful
• contact or kaitiaki role
• known limitations

For Māori-held information, source relationships can matter more than a conventional publisher field.

See Geospatial Data Catalogue, Templates and registers and Whakapapa of data.

Public data can still create new meaning

Public availability tells you how a source can be accessed. It does not tell you what a new combined map will reveal.

When public data is joined with iwi, hapū or whānau information, useful questions include:

• what new inferences appear
• whether the audience needs that level of detail
• whether source context survives the join
• whether a public or shared version should differ from the main working dataset

See Inference risk, Sensitive places and Publishing maps.

See it in practice

• Matawhenua GIS Mapping for a downloadable offline starter dataset and QGIS project
• Ngā Raraunga mō ngā Kaupapa Māori GIS Mahere for broad data discovery
• Matawhenua StoryMaps collection for imagery, whenua, freshwater, council GIS and 3D examples
• Ngā Poutama Matawhenua resources for recorded sessions and current learning material