Mapping the values of New Zealand's coastal waters. 4. A meta-analysis of environmental values. 

Beaumount, J., D'Archino, R., and MacDiarmid, A. 

2009 

 

 

Report 

Abstract Previous work by Beaumont et al. (2008) generated a spatially explicit database of marine environmental value of the New Zealand coastline. This database comprised 14 attributes of marine environmental value derived from 200 unique layers of environmental information ranging from species occurrences and diversity indices to marine mammal breeding areas and habitat distribution. The present study is a meta-analysis of the outputs from Beaumont et al. (2008). Using a ranking system to ensure data initially valued over different ranges could be meaningfully compared, 29 summary maps were created. These identify the overall trends in the spatial distributions of the attribute values for each dataset and identify areas of coincidence among high-value attributes of the indigenous coastal marine environment. Many coincident hotspots of biological and habitat diversity have been identified within this meta-analysis. The east coast of Northland, the Kaipara Harbour, southwest Fiordland, Stewart Island and the Chatham Islands all stand out as being particularly diverse with respect to both habitat and biological diversity. It should be noted that this meta-analysis is only as accurate as the available data and care should be taken when consulting these summary maps. 

Biodiversity, Socio-economic 

 

Beaumontetal2010environmental_values_mapping.pdf