Getting Started

Introduction

The LRIS Portal has been developed in conjunction with the team at Koordinates (http://koordinates.com ) to allow you to download environment data held specifically by Landcare Research for use in GIS and other applications that can handle geospatial data for mapping, querying and spatial analyses.  The portal represents phase one of the redevelopment of Landcare Research’s Geospatial Information Portal and is part of an endeavour to create a new repository of authoritative New Zealand science datasets and information.

Registration

While you can search and view data, to download data you need to be a registered user.

If you are an employee of Landcare Research you should have been automatically registered to use the Portal and have immediate access to the web site by logging in.

Public users of the LRIS Portal will have to register to establish a userid (a valid email address) and password.

It is important that you read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy BEFORE you register. Don’t forget to tick the check box to say you accept the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Once you have registered you will gain access to the portal.

An email acknowledging that you have registered to use the service will be sent to the email address you provided.  Messages, such as when your data is available for downloading, will also be sent to the email address you provided when you registered.

Logging in

If you are an employee of Landcare Research you should login using your normal Landcare (Windows) login username and password.

Public users should login using the username (email address) and password they provided when they registered.

Selecting and viewing a Layer

Once you have entered the LRIS Portal web site – you can select and access data you might want to download by a number of methods.

  1. On the home page you will see that the data layers available are organised into Categories displayed in a box at upper left.  Beside each category or sub-category are the numbers of data layers that have been included under each heading.  By clicking on a category you will reveal the data layers stored under that Category.
  2. You can search for a specific data layer, using its name, relevant keywords, or a location (geotag).  Just type the search words into the search box to the right of the LRIS Portal logo in the top left of the home page.
  3. Or you can simply click on the layers tab below the LRIS Portal logo – and scroll through all available layers.

 

Navigating the map

You can navigate around the map in various ways.

To zoom to a particular portion of the map, use the drag and zoom function. Click on the magnify glass icon. Then go to the area on the map you want to zoom into, and click and hold the mouse button down (the pointer will change to crosshair). Drag out a box covering the area you are interested in. Release the mouse button. After releasing the mouse button, the area will automatically zoom to the area that was selected. If needed, you can repeat the same steps to zoom further into the area.

Alternatively you can:

Once you think you have found what you are looking for you may want to check the contents of the data layer in more detail before committing to downloading the data.  Click on either the thumb nail of the data layer or the named link beside it and you will find yourself on the Summary page for that layer. This page includes a summary description, information about attached documents, the type of license the data is available under and tags (keywords).  On this page there are also tabs which allow you to see a metadata record for the data layer and to preview the attribute table associated with the data layer.

 

Viewing metadata about a Layer

Click on the Layers tab under the LRIS Portal logo (see also ‘Selecting and viewing a Layer’).

Locate the Layer you are interested in and click on the thumb nail map of link for that Layer.

When the page for that Layer is displayed it will show the Summary tab.  To view more extensive metadata for the Layer simply click on the Metadata tab immediately to the right of the Summary tab. A Dublin Core Metadata record for the Layer will be displayed. 

Note - The LRIS Portal stores Layer metadata as an ISO 19115 compliant metadata record in XML, which is great for a computer, but not very easy for a person to read.  We use Dublin Core to give you an easily digested view of the most important bits of the metadata for identifying a dataset and its value to you the user. (Dublin Core is a simple standard for metadata that shows only a subset of the full ISO metadata record.)

When you download a data Layer (or part of a Layer) you will receive (along with other ancillary documents like Data Dictionaries) a PDF version of the Dublin Core record, as well as the ISO 19115 record attached with your data set. 

 

Selecting and viewing a Layer

If you wish to see the data Layer overlaid on the map, click on the on the orange 'Add' button and you will see a map of your chosen Layer displayed on the main map. You can zoom and pan this map.

The 'Add' button will now have changed to a red 'Remove' button.

You can also view the attribute data of the Layer by clicking on the Data tab displayed near the top of the page about the Layer.  This opens a table of all attribute values for you to view.  This is a dynamic view and so the content may differ depending on the level the map is currently zoomed to.  It also contains all the records, so sometimes those visible may not contain much data of interest.   Scroll down the table to see more of the data.

 

 

Querying a Layer

The LRIS portal will display all of the polygons or cells in the data Layer so you can get an idea of what area it covers.  Many of Landcare Research’s Layers cover all of New Zealand, but not all.  The first layer you add will be blue, the second is usually red.  This portal does not provide multicolour visualisation of individual layers, or polygon labels.

You can use the magnify glass zoom tool (top left of the main map window) to zoom into a selected area. Clicking inside a polygon or a point on the map will bring up a new window with the attribute data for that polygon or point displayed.

Note the value of 0.0m highlighted in blue on the pop up window of attribute data.  This tells us that we clicked within a single polygon or cell.  If you haven’t zoomed in very far (or not at all) the system may have trouble determining which polygon or cell you actually wanted to query.  In such cases more than one polygon or cell may be displayed.  In this case, rather than just seeing 0.0m you may see a vertical list of numbers where each number represents increasing distances from the polygon or cell you clicked.  (These numbers refer to the distance (in map units) from the exact location of the mouse click – to this polygon or cell.) Clicking on each number in the list will result in the display of a different set of attributes values. 

 

Downloading a Layer

To download data to your computer, you need to have added at least one layer to ‘Your Map’. (Think of 'Your Map' as your shopping basket of data you want to download.)  Click on the  icon to display Your Map. When a layer has been added to Your Map, the 'Crop' and 'Download' buttons will become activated. 

You can use the 'Crop' button (which displays a magnify glass select tool) to select (crop) a specific geographic area of the data Layer to download. The default is to download the entire Layer.

Go to the area on the map you want to crop your data to, and click and hold the mouse button down (the pointer will change to crosshair). Drag out a box covering the area you are interested in.

Release the mouse button (the orange rectangle will turn into a black outlined box). You have now defined the desired area you want the data cropped to.  Note if you are looking at a very dark raster or image layer the black outline may be hard to see.  We hope to remedy this problem soon.

To deselect (remove) the crop area, click on the Crop button again. This resets the download to the whole data Layer. 

To download a Layer, click on the Download button.  A pop up window will appear. Here you can then select the format and projection you wish to receive the data in. You will also get an indication of the size of your download.

You can download your data as Shapefile or MapInfo Table format, as well as AutoCAD DWG format or Google earth KML format (there is no option for the projection for KML as it must be in latitude and longitude).

For more information on the formats and projections see the FAQ page.

Note that you can download multiple Layers in one request, including both vector and raster data. The download pop up box has options for formats for both types of data.  All layers will be cropped to the same extent if the cropping tool has been used.

Once you have completed the specification for your download, click on the download button to submit your download request.

You can cancel the creation of your download by clicking the stop icon next to the progress bar.

A pop-up should appear when your download is ready. Your download will be a zip file containing

To download the zip file to your computer, click on the green highlighted button containing the file name. You can either open the zip file or save it to a suitable location on your local machine, where you can unzip the contents for use in your GIS or any other software that can read the file format.

It may take a minute or two for the system to create your download file. The larger the size of the data you have requested, the longer it will take. The system will send you an email confirming your download is ready so for large requests you can exit the LRIS Portal, if you want to, and come back later to get your data.

 

Making a Comment

We are happy to receive comments about the Layers of data that have been made available through the Portal.  This is a place where you can let us (and other users) know if the data was useful to you, or let us know about possible problems/errors in the data.

Making a comment about a Layer of data is easy.  From the Summary page for the Layer, click on the Comments tab. (If people have already made comments, the number of comments made will be displayed on the tab).

Simply type your comment in the box provided and click on the Post Comment button below.

 

Your Dashboard

The Dashboard is an area of the LRIS portal where you can see what you have been doing on the portal.  You can also view a list of download requests you have made in the last 7 days (and download the files again if you want to) and change some of your personal settings.

In the future this is where you will be able to manage data you have uploaded to the LRIS Portal.

To get back to the main LRIS Portal Home page click on the logo at top left of your browser page – to the left of the search bar.

 

Getting help

If you need help, have found a problem or want to make a suggestion about the LRIS portal, select the "Contact Us" option under the Help & Feedback menu. Alternatively you can email lris_support@landcareresearch.co.nz.

Note that help is provided on a best endeavour basis. We are unable to respond to requests for help at weekends, on public holidays and outside normal working hours.