OpenTopography New Zealand

OpenTopography now provides a particularly convenient way to work with New Zealand's national LiDAR-derived elevation mosaic.

New Zealand Lidar 1 Meter DEM collection

The national collection

OpenTopography publishes two LINZ-derived products:

• LINZ1m_DTM — bare-earth terrain
• LINZ1m_DSM — surface heights

The collection metadata currently reports:

• 1 m raster resolution
• about 227,926 km² coverage
• survey dates from May 2008 to May 2025 in the current collection metadata
• horizontal CRS: NZTM2000 / NZGD2000, EPSG:2193
• vertical CRS: NZVD2016, EPSG:7839
• CC BY 4.0
• DOI: 10.5069/G9ZK5DW0

OpenTopography notes that newer surveys are prioritised where several surveys overlap. This produces a useful seamless national surface but means the mosaic is not one capture date.

What the portal is good at

For a study area rather than an entire region, OpenTopography can be faster than locating and mosaicking many LINZ tiles. Depending on the dataset/interface it can support area-of-interest extraction and terrain processing such as hillshade, slope, aspect, roughness and contours.

A simple workflow

1. open the DTM or DSM product
2. draw or enter the area of interest
3. choose only the terrain product required
4. request GeoTIFF output for QGIS/ArcGIS
5. create derivative products only at a resolution justified by the source
6. retain the OpenTopography dataset/DOI and original LINZ attribution in project metadata

When OpenTopography is preferable

• quick clipping to a research extent
• standard terrain derivatives without first managing many source tiles
• API/STAC-based automation
• education and exploratory terrain analysis

When LINZ is preferable

• individual survey capture dates/reports
• original classified point cloud
• exact survey/licensor metadata
• newest regional survey before it appears in a third-party mosaic
• bulk national cloud access through the official source

Use LINZ versus OpenTopography for a direct comparison.

Last reviewed: 26 August 2026