How Does Changing Land Cover and Land Use in New Zealand Relate to Land Use Capability and Slope?

Abstract

Land cover and use are critical for climate change, water quality and use, biodiversity and soil conservation as well as important drivers of rural economic activity and the evolution of rural communities. The Land Use in Rural New Zealand (LURNZ) model is a simulation model that predicts overall shifts in land use at a national scale and then allocates those changes spatially. We create a new dataset that allows us to consider fine scale land cover and use on private rural land and land characteristics associated with those land covers and uses. Second, we produce some summary statistics on the land cover transitions that were observed from 1996 to 2002. We find some evidence that supports our simple model of the relationship between land use changes and observable land quality, and the use of Land Use Capability and slope in rules to simulate the location of changes in land use and cover and also identify some directions for future work.

Modelling Changing Rural Land Use in New Zealand 1997 to 2008 Using a Multinomial Logit Approach

“…Rotational crops also require fertile land, along with flat land to make efficient harvesting practicable. Extensive sheep and beef and forestry are uses which do not require such fertile land and are profitable on rugged high country land (Todd and Kerr 2009). Furthermore, given that agricultural produce and logs are important exports for New Zealand, the relevant distance to market may be distance to port or distance to a processing facility (Tímár 2011).…”

“…The main restriction with the data being old is that carrying capacity in stock units is now higher than the 1970s due to advances in farming techniques, but the data still provides a reasonable measure of relative carrying capacity of land. 9 Todd and Kerr (2009) document how land quality and slope affect land managers' choices between dairy, sheep and beef, forestry and scrub. Highest quality land (including highest productive capacity and a low slope) can be expected to be in dairy, followed by sheep and beef and forestry, with lowest quality in scrub.…”

“…There is little dairy on land with more than a 10 degree slope, with 85 percent of dairy farms being found on what is effectively flat land. Extensive sheep and beef is found on hilly terrain, whereas intensive sheep and beef is on flatter land (Todd and Kerr 2009). The distance datasets, held by Motu Research, are calculated using the distance of each pixel to ports and supermarkets around the country.…”

“…Land cover and use are also important for biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services such as soil conservation (Rutledge et al 2012). Economic activity is fundamentally shaped by a spatial dimension, and rural land use is of high importance to the economic performance of rural communities (Bockstael 1996;Todd and Kerr 2009).…”

Geospatial analysis of forest fragmentation in Uttara Kannada District, India

“…based on their role in land use changes will help to evolve management strategies and sustain landscape elements with their interactions (Todd and Kerr 2009). PCA explores multivariate patterns of all forest patch types versus spatial processes based on correlation matrices and frames clusters and relates spatial heterogeneity among variables correlated with one another and responsive to multiple principal components (PC).…”