Access LINZ WMTS imagery layers in ArcGIS
A workflow to add LINZ's WMTS imagery layers to ArcGIS Pro and the Map Viewer in ArcGIS Online and Enterprise.
Introduction
In New Zealand we are lucky to have access to so much publicly available imagery. There is a variety of options when you need Imagery of New Zealand in your project.
If you're looking for an up to date New Zealand Imagery Basemap in NZTM, you can find these already on ArcGIS Online together with other basemap in NZTM . The NZ imagery Basemap uses the best publicly available high-resolution imagery and are enabled to be taken offline for your offline workflows. They are ready to use, so you can just drop these in your map.
LINZ also makes the imagery data available on the LINZ Data Service , in a public AWS S3 bucket and as WMTS layers.
How you can connect to the imagery hosted in AWS S3 through ArcGIS Pro or ArcGIS Enterprise and use them for analysis or to create your own custom basemap is explained in other stories in the StoryMap Collection .
In this StoryMap we will show how you bring in individual WMTS imagery layers into ArcGIS. This can be useful when you want to easily view imagery that isn't part of the NZ Imagery basemap because it has a lower resolution or it is older imagery that is replaced with newer imagery. This StoryMap runs through how you can add these WMTS imagery layers from LINZ both to ArcGIS Pro and the Map Viewer in ArcGIS Online and Enterprise.
Find the WMTS Imagery layer
LINZ provide a free, and frequently updated aerial imagery service, found here at https://basemaps.linz.govt.nz/. The following story map will run through how you can connect to the service in both ArcGIS online and ArcGIS pro.
0:01 To find the WMTS service URLs, click the burger icon in the top right corner.
0:05 At the top of the panel underneath the Layers heading, select the down arrow to open the drop down. This will show all the imagery layers available to you.
0:10 Scroll through the layers and find which one you require. If you have a region or year in mind you can also begin typing after selecting the drop down to search through them.
Searching through layers
0:20 Once you have selected the correct layer, navigate down to the middle of the panel. Under the 90 day API keys** determine which projection is right for you and click the blue copy button to the right of the URL to copy the URL to your clipboard.
**For your Information: The 90-day API key will stop working after 90-days. For an unrestricted API key that won't expire after 90 days, click the Contact us button on the side panel or email basemaps@linz.govt.nz.
Continue on with the StoryMap to learn how to add the imagery to ArcGIS Pro and the Map Viewer.
Add the Imagery layer to ArcGIS Pro
0:01 In ArcGIS Pro on the Insert tab, within the Project group, click Connections.
0:04 Click Server and select New WMTS Server.
0:12 Paste the WMTS URL into the Server URL section and click Ok.
0:21 Navigate to the Catalog Pane and open the Servers folder. Click the server connection, "LINZ Basemaps Service on basemaps.linz.govt.nz.wmts" and then click the WMTS service "LINZ Basemaps Service" to find the WMTS layer.
0:26 Right-click the WMTS layer "Christchurch 0.075m Urban Aerial Photos (2018-2019)" and Add to Current Map or drag and drop the layer into your map.
Add the Imagery layer to the Map Viewer
0:05 In the web map viewer, click the plus button in the top left of the viewr. Select Add a layer from URL. In the pop-up pane, paste the WMTS URL , it should automatically choose WMTS as the type.
0:15 Select Add custom parameter, and type "api" for the parameter with the value being your API key.
0:20 To get your API key, highlight, right click and cut the API key from the end of your URL. Then, remove "api=" from your URL.
0:35 Select Add custom parameter for a second time, the Parameter will be "tileFormat" and the Value will be "webp" this will make the image background transparent so that you can see the basemap for context.
0:49 Select Next, and finally, click Add to map.
The map will automatically zoom to the new layer, and now you have added WMTS imagery to your map.
