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Terrain · Select a property, draw a box or polygon, or upload a boundary

Landform classification map for New Zealand land

Landform classification labels every part of a block as one of ten landforms, from peaks and ridges down to hollows, valleys and pits, using the geomorphons method on the LINZ 1 m LiDAR model.

It reads the shape of the land at a glance: exposed ridges, well-drained spurs, sheltered hollows and where water gathers.

Landform classes coloured across the hill: slopes, spurs, hollows, ridges and valleys
Landforms on Mt Iron, Wānaka. The walkthrough below shows how this was made.

Free to run · pay to download

See the full result on the map free, with no account. Download the landform map as a GeoTIFF with a pass: NZ$49 for 7 days or NZ$299 for 12 months, one-off, GST included, not a subscription. Every download on the site is included while the pass lasts.

Open Landforms on the map →Pass prices and what’s included

Who uses this

  • Farmers and foresters. Match planting and stock to exposed ridges and sheltered hollows.
  • Ecologists and GIS analysts. Get a geomorphon map without setting up GIS.

When to use it

  • Reading the shape of a block quickly: where the ridges, gullies and flats are.
  • Finding sheltered hollows, exposed ridges or well-drained spurs for planting and stock.
  • Understanding drainage and slope stability patterns before a walk-over.

Which tool for your job

Landforms is one step in a bigger question. These are the jobs it helps with, and the tools that go with it.

If you’re working on drainage, flooding and wet ground

Where does the water go, and where will it sit?

  1. 1.Water & Drainage — The drainage channels across an area, and where water ponds once hollows fill.
  2. 2.Wetness Map — Which parts of a paddock the shape of the land keeps wet.
  3. 3.Catchment — All the land that drains to one culvert, gully or low corner.
  4. 4.Landforms (this tool) — Hollows, valleys and footslopes at a glance: where water gathers.

If you’re working on farming, orchards and planting

Which ground suits which use?

  1. 1.Slope & Aspect — Machinery limits and erosion-prone faces.
  2. 2.Sunlight — Frost pockets and shaded faces in winter.
  3. 3.Wetness Map — Wet-tolerant planting in the blue, drought-tolerant on the tan.
  4. 4.Landforms (this tool) — Exposed ridges, sheltered hollows and well-drained spurs.

How to use it

  1. Select a property, draw an area or upload a boundary.
  2. Set the neighbourhood radius in metres. Small radii pick out paddock-scale features; large radii describe the hill as a whole.
  3. Run. Each landform has its own colour, and the panel gives each one's share of the area.

Step by step: Mt Iron, Wānaka

We classify the shape of the ground on Mt Iron at a 50 m neighbourhood.

Landforms panel with an area over Mt Iron and a neighbourhood radius field
1.Frame the area and set the neighbourhood radius. 50 m reads the hillside; 10 m would pick out banks and drains.
Landform classes coloured across the hill: slopes, spurs, hollows, ridges and valleys
2.Run analysis. 57.3 % of the area is plain slope, 13.9 % spur, 8.7 % hollow, 4.5 % valley and 3.7 % ridge.
Close view of spurs and hollows on the flank of Mt Iron
3.Zoom in to follow the spurs (well-drained, exposed) and the hollows between them (where water and cold air gather).

What it showed

  • Run the same area at 20 m and 200 m; the classes change because landform depends on the scale you look at.

Screenshots from NZ Elevation Tools. Aerial imagery from LINZ Basemaps. Sourced from the LINZ Data Service and licensed by Environment Southland, Otago Regional Council and Queenstown-Lakes District Council for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

Try it on Mt Iron, Wānaka →

How it works

The tool looks out from each cell in eight directions to the chosen radius and records whether the ground rises or falls in each. The pattern of rises and falls is matched to one of ten landform types, a method known as geomorphons.

Reading the results

Ridges and peaks are the high, exposed ground; valleys, hollows and pits collect water; spurs and shoulders are the well-drained slopes between.

The same hillside can read differently at 20 m and 200 m radius. That is expected: landform depends on the scale you look at.

Limits and warnings

  • Radius from 5 to 250 m. Areas are sampled more coarsely than contours, so the smallest features can be missed on large areas.
  • Where 1 m LiDAR has not been flown the tool falls back to the national 8 m elevation model, and the result says what share came from the fallback. The 8 m model was interpolated from 20 m map contours and is not fit for site-scale decisions.

Data and attribution

Results come from the LINZ national 1 m LiDAR bare-earth elevation model, read in your browser, with the national 8 m model filling any gaps. Tools that use the surface model (Sunlight, Viewshed, Object Heights) read the matching LiDAR surface tiles.

Elevation and cadastral data is sourced from the LINZ Data Service and licensed for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. Copyright in each LiDAR survey belongs to the body that commissioned it — a regional or district council, Waka Kotahi, NIWA and around thirty others — rather than to LINZ, which hosts and processes the national dataset. Every file exported from this site names the licensors whose surveys cover the area, and anything you publish from those files carries the same attribution requirement. See https://www.linz.govt.nz/products-services/data/licensing-and-using-data/attributing-elevation-or-aerial-imagery-data

Questions

What radius should I use?

Small radii, 10–30 m, pick out paddock-scale features. Larger radii, 100–250 m, describe the hill as a whole. The same slope can read differently at each scale.

Ready to try it?

Open Landforms on the map →

Free to use, no account. Runs in your browser on LINZ open data. Downloading the results needs a pass: see prices.