GeoNet collects environmental data to monitor geological hazards in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The term “environmental data” has a broad definition that encompasses measuring the environment and its effects and impacts on the ecosystem. The term is generally used to describe data such as those collected by New Zealand’s regional councils to monitor river levels, rainfall, air quality, soil characteristics, and the like.
In the GeoNet context, the term “environmental data” is used to describe a subset of those data, recorded in locations that enable the monitoring of landslides and volcanoes.
GeoNet collects environmental monitoring data at landslide and volcano features.
Landslide monitoring focuses on landslide sites in the valley at Fox Glacier.
Volcano monitoring targets lakes, springs, and fumaroles at several active and potentially active volcanoes.
GeoNet uses the term “envirosensor” to describe our systems for collecting environmental data at landslides and volcanoes. Broadly similar technology is used by other agencies, but our uses are slightly different and existing terminology did not cover the whole scope of what we do in this area. Our "envirosensors" are composed of a datalogger and one or more sensors. We use a common off-the-shelf datalogger. Where possible, we also use off-the-shelf sensors, but in some cases, we need to repackage those to suit our uses and the extreme environments in which we sometimes deploy the sensors.
GeoNet has been operating our Envirosensor Network since 2021. We commonly use a data sampling interval of 10 minutes, with new data retrieved from field sites hourly. Where existing data collection standards exist, for example for weather observation, our Envirosensor Network, and especially field sites, tries to follow those.
Data are collected regularly and automatically from the GeoNet Envirosensor Network.
The data sampling interval is typically 10 minutes, with new data available hourly.
Time series data are available through Tilde, GeoNet’s Time Series API. In Tilde, environmental monitoring data are available through the “envirosensor” data domain. Data can be accessed via the Tilde Time Series Data Discovery tool or via the Tilde API. Data are available in CSV or JSON format.
Environmental time series data are also available via AWS Open Data. This is the recommended method to quickly download large volumes of data.
Metadata for the Envirosensors Network are available through GeoNet’s delta GitHub repository.
If you use these data, please cite us following the info in our Data Policy for Automatically Collected Volcano and Landslide data.