QGIS plugin for browsing and streaming New Zealand aerial imagery — v1.0.6
After clicking the map, results appear grouped by region (e.g. OTAGO AERIAL IMAGERY, AUCKLAND AERIAL IMAGERY), with satellite imagery in its own group at the bottom. Within each group results are sorted newest survey first.
| Interaction | Action |
|---|---|
| Single-click a result | Highlight the tile footprint on the map canvas |
| Double-click a result | Stream the COG into QGIS |
| Right-click a result | Open context menu (see below) |
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Load on Map | Stream the COG directly into QGIS as a raster layer |
| Download COG… | Open the source S3 URL in your browser to download |
| Copy COG URL | Copy the direct S3 TIFF URL to clipboard |
| View in Web Explorer… | Open imagery.mutant.kiwi in your browser, flying to this location and loading the sheet |
Access via . Adding any basemap automatically zooms the canvas to New Zealand and sets the CRS to EPSG:3857.
| Basemap | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| NZ Topographic | Vector tiles | Full topo map with LINZ topographic-v2 style |
| NZ Topo Lite | Vector tiles | Simplified topo style |
| NZ Topo Raster | XYZ raster | Raster topo with grid lines |
| NZ Topo Raster (Gridless) | XYZ raster | Raster topo without grid |
| NZ Current Imagery | XYZ raster | Latest LINZ aerial imagery mosaic |
| Scanned Aerial Imagery (post 1989) | XYZ raster | Historic scanned aerials 1990–present |
| Scanned Aerial Imagery (pre 1990) | XYZ raster | Historic scanned aerials before 1990 |
LINZ attribution (© LINZ CC BY 4.0 © Imagery Basemap contributors) appears automatically in the bottom-right corner of the canvas when any LINZ layer is present, and hides when all LINZ layers are removed.
Near-infrared series are automatically detected by title and rendered as Colour Infrared (CIR) false-colour composite:
| Display channel | Source band | Typical appearance |
|---|---|---|
| Red | NIR (Band 4) | Healthy vegetation — bright red |
| Green | Red (Band 1) | Stressed vegetation / soil — pink or pale |
| Blue | Green (Band 2) | Water — dark blue or black |
Access via
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Max results per click | 50 | Maximum sheets returned per map click |
| Zoom to extent on load | On | Zoom the canvas to the COG extent after loading |
| Show tile footprint | On | Highlight the sheet boundary on single-click |
| Group by series | On | Place loaded tiles into named layer groups in the layer panel |
The companion browser-based viewer at imagery.mutant.kiwi offers the same imagery search with additional features including shareable links, a compass navigator for loading adjacent tiles, and basemap switching. Right-click any result in QGIS and select View in Web Explorer… to open the web viewer centred on that exact sheet.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+Shift+I | Toggle Imagery Explorer panel open/closed |
Check your internet connection. Open View → Log Messages → mutant.kiwi Imagery Explorer
for diagnostic output. The spatial index file at
https://imagery.mutant.kiwi/all_imagery.fgb
must be reachable.
This is usually a GDAL version issue. Check View → Log Messages → General for GDAL errors. The plugin applies fixes for known GDAL 3.11+ issues with AWS S3 HTTP connections automatically at startup.
Check that your QGIS canvas CRS is set to EPSG:3857. Adding a basemap via the plugin menu automatically sets this.
The attribution label only shows when at least one LINZ layer (basemap or COG) is loaded. It hides automatically when all LINZ layers are removed from the project.
Imagery: © Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand
— CC BY 4.0
Basemaps: © LINZ Basemap contributors
Source data: nz-imagery on AWS Open Data
Web viewer: imagery.mutant.kiwi