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Southland Councils data via eolas

The Southland region covers ~105,000 people across Environment Southland (ES) and three territorial authorities — Gore, Invercargill, and Southland District (which alone covers ~32,000 km² — the largest TA in NZ by area). eolas serves 48 datasets — heavy on the freshwater + farming side, reflecting Southland's intensive dairying + sheep/beef economy.

If you're doing Southland property research, water-quality / catchment work, or agricultural-land analysis — this is the source.

What's in the catalogue

Council Code Datasets Highlights
Southland District (SDC) sdc 20 Largest area + most layers — DP zones, designations, hazards, infrastructure
Invercargill City (ICC) icc 11 City DP zones + hazards + heritage
Environment Southland (ES) es 10 Catchment degradation (E. coli, nitrogen), liquefaction, physiographic zones, land use 2025
Gore District gore 7 DP designations + hazards

Standout datasets

  • es_southland_land_use_2025 — current Southland land-use map (one of few council-current land-use rasters in NZ)
  • es_catchment_degradation_ecoli, es_catchment_degradation_total_n — water-quality status by catchment (relevant for farm-environment-plan compliance)
  • es_physiographic_zones — soil + climate composite that drives nutrient leaching modelling
  • es_significant_wetlands — protected wetland areas
  • es_tsunami_evacuation_zones — Southland coastal exposure (Foveaux Strait)
  • gore_earthquake_priority_buildings — earthquake-prone building register

Browse: eolas.fyi/datasets?source=Southland+Councils.

Refresh schedule

Weekly, Wednesday morning NZ time. ES publishes via es.govt.nz/data; SDC + ICC via ArcGIS portals.

License

All Southland council data is CC-BY 4.0.

Common patterns

Catchment water-quality lookup

import geopandas as gpd
from shapely.geometry import Point

pt = gpd.GeoSeries([Point(168.3478, -46.4131)], crs="EPSG:4326")  # central Invercargill
ecoli = client.southland("es_catchment_degradation_ecoli", as_sf=True)
hit = gpd.sjoin(pt.to_frame("g").set_geometry("g"), ecoli, predicate="within")
if len(hit):
    print(f"Catchment E. coli status: {hit['degradation_class'].iloc[0]}")

Land-use composition

lu = client.southland("es_southland_land_use_2025", as_sf=True)
lu["area_ha"] = lu.to_crs("EPSG:2193").area / 10_000
by_class = lu.groupby("land_use_class")["area_ha"].sum().sort_values(ascending=False)
print(by_class.head(15))

Earthquake-prone buildings (Gore)

epb = client.southland("gore_earthquake_priority_buildings", as_sf=True)
print(epb.groupby("status").size())  # remediated, partial, outstanding

Source-specific notes

  • ES land-use map is unusually current: 2025 vintage. Most regional councils don't publish recent land-use rasters — Southland + Otago do.
  • Physiographic zones drive nutrient policy: es_physiographic_zones is the basis for Southland's nutrient-allocation methodology. Used in farm-environment plan + consent-renewal contexts.
  • Tsunami exposure: while not as exposed as the BoP / East Coast, Southland still has tsunami evacuation zones for the Foveaux Strait + Bluff Peninsula.
  • Southland District size: SDC covers 32,000 km² — second only to Auckland Council by area (and the largest by land area on the South Island). Its district plan is correspondingly large.
  • Contaminated sites: Gore + Invercargill publish contaminated-land registers — relevant for industrial / brownfield property research.

Where to find more