60 years of landscape change on Waiheke Island

By: Mariane N. Quirino

Auckland University of Technology (AUT)

Subject: ENVS621 – GIS Semester 1 project ID: 16954308 Date: 11/04/2019

Contents

Abstract ...... 3 1. Introduction ...... 4 1.1 Background ...... 4 1.2 Waiheke Island socio-economic changes ...... 4 1.3 GIS ...... 5 1.4 Aim ...... 5 2. Methods ...... 5 3. Results ...... 7 4. Discussion and Recommendations ...... 11 References ...... 12 Appendix ...... 13

Abstract Over the past 60 years Waiheke Island landscape has changed dramatically, due to rapid demographic growth, increased interest from to stablish there and a busting tourism industry. Geographic Information System (GIS) was used to categorise and quantify (using landscape metrics) to examine the landscape changes overtime, in total and per suburb. The report show how buildings around the island have increased, in total, an astonishing 1284% from 1959 to 2018, also roads and bush vegetation have expanded and now account for 223km and 41km², respectively. Contrastingly, wetlands, river/streams and farmland have shrunk overtime. In total, 28.75km of Eastern Waiheke rivers have disappeared and farmland have given place to urban areas on suburbs like Enclosure Bay, Kennedy Point and . Hence the prediction that the island rapid growth has taken away the 50’ ‘laidback’ farming characters of the island to give place to a expensive house market, upmarket vineyards and boutique hotels to accommodate high income tourists.

Introduction To be able to understand the landscape changes on Waiheke island in the last 60 years it is necessary to investigate the demographic, economic and ecological transformation undergone at the local level. In the case of small the rapid growth in the last half century with the global trend of rural migration to cities, fast development and commute between countries had a great impact in local trade and propelled growth, but that also implicated huge pressure and changes in bush, forests, water bodies and other natural resources.

1.1 Background

The Waiheke island is part of the in Region, it comprises of a land area of approximately 93km² with a 133.5km of coastline and a port, Matiatia, that provides regular ferry transfers to and from Auckland, only 17km from central Auckland (Baragwanath, The Waiheke Project - Overview of tourism, wine and development on Waiheke Island, 2010). The island of volcanic origin has many hills and a few flat areas, with a similar temperature to Auckland but drier and with more sunshine hours. The population is unevenly distributed, with most people living in the western half of the island, at the suburbs of: Oneroa, Blackpool, Surfdale, Ostend, Palm Beach and . The eastern side present mainly rural zonation, with a reasonable size Maori owned land (2500 acres), a large (4500 acres) and smaller farms and coastal communities (Baragwanath, The Waiheke Project - Overview of tourism, wine and development on Waiheke Island, 2010).

1.2 Waiheke Island socio-economic changes

“Waiheke used to be a summertime retreat with marginal farmland, small rural township and a tenuous ferry connection. It appealed to people seeking a remote, isolated, alternative lifestyle” (Baragwanath & Lewis, 2014, p. 211) The ferry service began operating in 1946, and reflecting Auckland`s house shortage and the crescent interest for holiday homes the Waiheke population grown relatively fast (Baragwanath, 2010). Demographically, in 1950, the island had an estimated population of 1,250 (Wood, 1951) and by 2017 the community had grown to 9,530 (Allpress & Tuatagaloa, 2018). With more and better ferry services over the years Waiheke has developed fast. The island is also a popular touristic destination for New Zealanders and foreigners alike, with an estimated 1.3 million unique visitors in 2016/2017, what put a lot of pressure on the current infrastructure (Allpress & Tuatagaloa, 2018). Another big economic change to the island is a growing wine industry that attract a lot of tourism to the , mainly to: Waiheke, Matakana and West Auckland (Baragwanath, 2010). With an ever growing population, busy tourism and easy access, the housing price in Waiheke has increased drastically and is no longer affordable for the once normal alternative culture, beneficiaries and retirees, addressed as ‘Waiheke hippies’, who in the past have sought isolation and the island sense of community. (Baragwanath & Lewis, 2014, p. 213). “The island socioeconomic profile is imprinted in the landscape, with imposing houses on subdivided farms, many on ridge lines and beach fronts, these changes show a drastic change in lifestyle to a more expensive, sophisticated and cosmopolitan way of living” (Baragwanath, 2010, p. 19)

1.3 GIS

A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a useful tool to answer an array of questions including changes in landscape overtime. Many studies have previously used GIS as a fruitful way to analyse data and understand modifications on topography. For example a research was undertaken using GIS as a mean to understand changes in an urban area in Atlanta in the USA, it concluded that GIS helped to reveal the underlying processes of urban changes (Liu & Yang, 2015). In addition, GIS can be used to quantify the impact of land-use on natural resources and ecosystems. As shown by a study in Spain where aerial imagery in conjunction with GIS were used to provide quantitative information on loss, fragmentation and alteration of holm oak in Caceres province (Plieninger, 2006). Furthermore, a landscape ecology study used spatial analysis and geospatial modelling to create scenarios and make predicting on urban forest loss in an area in Minnesota, USA, and it has concluded that “GIS models should be used by land managers and policymakers as a tool for explorative planning, scenario development and environmental impact assessment” (Paudel & Yuan, 2012).

1.4 Aim

The main objective of this study is to quantify changes in land-use on Waiheke island from 1959 to present day, and identify and interpret the impacts of those changes in Waiheke economy, demography and natural resources. Analysing landscape changes is a useful way to understand and predict conversion in land use, natural resources, biodiversity, socioeconomic and demographic, expansion or retraction, in a pre-determined area, in this case Waiheke Island.

Methods The data was provided by Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and included 2 images, 2 vector polygon feature class layers, 2 vector line feature class, 1 vector point feature class and a raster layer. The description of the dataset can be seen in the flowchart of the working procedural route (Fig 1.) below.

Figure 1: Workflow Chart – Visually describe the raw data and the processing of data on Arc GisPro to achieve our aim of describing landscape change in the Waiheke Island

To quantify changes in landscape first the Waiheke island map of 1950`s and the suburb map had to be georeferenced, that generated a rectified layer that now contains spatial coordinates. This was followed by a digitising process that allowed each feature (river/streams, buildings, vegetation, roads and suburbs) to be converted into vectors (line, points and polygons). Vegetations layer from 1959 were digitized from “1959_rectified.tif”, since there was no legend to the map, all “green” vegetation was classified as ‘bush’, all areas with doted contour, where it was possible to identify it as wetland, were classified as ‘wetland’. Furthermore to define the farmland, all rivers/stream were buffered 20m, and all urban areas (suburbs with more than 30 building clumped close by) were surrounded by a polygon and denominated as ‘NA’. This allowed the layers ‘buffed river’ and ‘forests1959_1’ to be joined using union, and all newly formed polygons that showed a value of -1 were defined as ‘farmland’. For the 2018 landuse/vegetation layer, a table (appendix1) was created to separate the many vegetations types into: bush, wetland, farmland or NA (area type not included in this report). These process (Figure1) allowed the GIS software to see and compute values related to length and area of the digitised features, using identity the vectors were allocated into their appropriate suburb areas, and statistics summary tool was used to generate tables and graphs displayed in the results analysis. These generated standalone tables (total sum and per suburb sum) with information related to how much changed has happened between the 1959 and 2018 landscape. A tabular table was then generated to display the quantified changes per suburb and total area, length or count, depending on the feature. To visualize the landscape change in the Waiheke Island each final layer features were grouped into two map layouts, their layout workflow is displayed on Appendix2 for the buildings map and Appendix3 for the landscape map.

Results Landscape changes have occurred all across Waiheke Island. Table 1 present the dramatic demographic growth of the island, with roads length now reaching 223.60km, a growth of 215%. Roads on Western Waiheke have gone from 11km to 86km. Moreover, Building counts showed a the biggest increase from all features analysed, a staggering 1284% overall. One of the highest increases in density (Figure 2) occurred in Enclosure Bay, with 2177%, closely followed by Surfdale, Oneroa and Ostend suburbs, 1842%, 1796% and 1586%, respectively. Contrastingly, there was losses on natural features over last 60 years, with river/streams shrinking 18%, in total.

Table 1 – Quantified landscape changes on Waiheke Island from 1959 to 2018: roads (km), river/streams (km) and buildings (count), per suburb and in total. Roads (Km) River/Streams (Km) Buildings (count) Suburbs 1959 2018 1959 2018 1959 2018 Eastern Waiheke 11.28 86.28 124.59 95.84 123 751 Enclosure Bay 3.32 13 296 Kennedy Point 2.78 17 244 Matiatia 1.37 21.82 5.11 6.81 17 439 Omiha 0.10 6.28 1.77 1.97 11 143 Oneroa 5.98 21.00 2.13 1.05 99 1877 Onetangi 18.53 22.21 6.92 8.38 132 1490 Orapiu 5.42 0.14 17 190 Ostend 17.38 23.13 4.25 3.45 125 2107 Palm Beach 7.01 7.92 1.10 1.74 82 745 Rocky Bay 6.94 9.24 0.96 1.17 86 537 Surfdale 2.50 14.19 1.07 1.68 69 1340 Total 71.09 223.59 148.05 122.07 791 10159

Figure 2 - Building from 1959 and 2018, per suburb on the eastern part of Waiheke Island, where the most amount of urbanization has taken place, scale 1:35,000 Vegetation (Table2) has also changed considerably in Waiheke, overall there was a decrease of 12% in wetlands, where Onetangi suburb lost 66% of it and in Western Waiheke area it decreased by 17%. Farmlands have also retracted over the 60 years period, in total over 40% of those areas are gone. All suburbs have lost farmland, in Enclosure Bay 100% of it was removed and in Surfdale, Orapiu and Oneroa over 80% of the farms are no longer present.

Table 2 - Quantified changes in vegetation on Waiheke Island from 1959 to 2018: farmland, bush, wetland, all in km², per suburb and in total Farmland (Km²) Bush (Km²) Wetland (Km²) Suburbs 1959 2018 1959 2018 1959 2018 Eastern Waiheke 49.46 30.26 9.73 31.31 1.82 1.51 Enclosure Bay 0.55 0.00 0.28 Kennedy Point 0.59 0.19 0.10 0.30 Matiatia 5.82 4.08 0.92 2.51 0.02 Omiha 1.79 0.80 0.28 1.30 0.02 0.02 Oneroa 0.94 0.18 0.44 0.62 Onetangi 4.18 2.55 0.39 1.78 0.07 0.02 Orapiu 0.82 0.11 0.12 0.82 Ostend 2.20 1.02 0.12 0.10 Palm Beach 1.41 0.95 0.04 0.43 Rocky Bay 0.89 0.27 0.26 1.10 0.00 Surfdale 0.40 0.06 0.07 0.43 Total 69.07 40.48 12.45 40.87 1.91 1.68

On the other hand, bush areas have grown by 228%. All but one suburb (Ostend) shown an increase on bush vegetation, those include broadwood, indigenous and exotic forest and other features (appendix1), the highest increase was on Palm Beach suburb, 1000%, followed by Orapiu and Surfdale, both presenting a growth of over 500%.

As a way to picture all this changes, a layout map present the features of 1959 and 2018 (Figure 3). It is noticeable how much farmland has given place to bush areas, and how rivers/streams from 1959 have lost some ground, especially in Western Waiheke. Another visible change is the spreading of urban areas on the eastern side of the island.

Figure 3 - Landscape map from Waiheke Island 1959 and 2018, including roads, rivers and streams, farmland, bush and wetlands, scale 1:110,000 Discussion and Recommendations Waiheke has suffered a lot of land use changes over the past 60 year. The demographic density have been growing considerably, as it can be seen on the buildings layout (figure 2) this imply more urban areas and more roads (table1) to connect the different places in the island. Those changes also attract more business, e.g. vineyards and tourism, as suggested by Baragwanath, L. (2010) “the changes reflect an enormously positive transition toward economic land-use, as opposed to the previous marginal pasture covered in gorse and thistle. However, for others the changes represent an unwelcome shift associated with urban values and escalating land values”. In terms of natural resources and the ecosystem, the urbanization has had a negative impact in river/streams and wetlands, both important for birds, insects and other native animals. Urban growth meant, as expected, a decrease on farmland (figure3), it also often mean more presure on native forest and reduction of important ecosystems (e.g. reduction of wetlands, table2) . Surprisingly Waiheke landcape changes also presented a increase in bush areas, what can be interpreted as an important indicator that eco-tourism and the intrinsic values of nature still play an important role on Waiheke life-style and economy, and therefore some of its forests and bush land will be preserved, even with property values on the rise and a growing outsider interest in moving to the island. A visitor survey conducted by Baragwanath L., Lewis N. & Priestley B. (2009) shown that “Waiheke beaches, scenery, and cultural attractions cause tourists to flock to the island each summer, expanding the resident population from 8,000 to over 30,000. Tourism estimative vary between 400,000 and 700,000 visitors to Waiheke every year”. Furthermore, according to (Liu & Yang, 2015) “examining the size, pattern, and nature of land changes using landscape metrics to understand the characterization of spatial patterns helps reveal the underlying processes of urban land changes”. To take precision into account, since features from 1959 had to be digitized from a image map with no legend, the accuracy of the vegetation is only as good as the interpretation of the person responsible for digitizing it, here a executive decision was made to try to represent every patch of green as well as possible, those polygons were treated as ‘bush’. Also, any area that resembled wetland was also digitised, but to be able to determine farmland, there was a need to make an educated guess on urban areas, and therefore any predictions related to vegetation should be made with precaution. Furthermore, river/streams lines were buffered 20m each side and that would also have a negative impact on the final quantity of farmland on the 1959. Therefore we suggest that future studies should be conducted using a better ‘image map’ from 1959 with proper legend and better resolution would be a bonus, to be more accurate when determining farmland, and to fully understand the many bush areas and be more precise when comparing with the 2018 vegetation layer that contain many different vegetations type (appendix1). Also quantitative tables should include urban area, for a more complete analyses. To sum up this analyses of landscape has cast light into the undergone demographic and economical changes of Waiheke Island described above, it also allowed for predictions on the island near future. With no signs of any slowing down on its fast development, Waiheke house price will remain high, vineyards and tourism will keep busting the local economy and most likely bring more accommodation and tourism facilities to the area.

References Allpress, J., & Tuatagaloa, P. (2018). Waiheke Community Survey: Results from a 2018 survey of Waiheke residents. Auckland: . Retrieved April 04, 2019, from https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/about-auckland- council/how-auckland-council-works/local-boards/all-local-boards/waiheke- local-board/Documents/waiheke-community-survey-results-2018.pdf Baragwanath, L. (2010). The Waiheke Project - Overview of tourism, wine and development on Waiheke Island. The University of Auckland , School of Environment. Auckland: Occasional Publication . Retrieved April 04, 2019, from http://knowledgeauckland.org.nz/assets/publications/Waiheke_Project__Over view_of_tourism_wine_and_development_on_Waiheke_Island.pdf Baragwanath, L., & Lewis, N. (2014). Waiheke Island . In P. J. Howland, Social, Cultural and Economic Impacts of Wine in New Zealand (pp. 211-214). Oxon: Routledge. Baragwanath, L., Lewis, N., & Priestley, B. (2009). Waiheke Island Visitor Survey. Auckland: School of Environment - Auckland University. Retrieved from http://knowledgeauckland.org.nz/assets/publications/Waiheke_Project__Over view_of_tourism_wine_and_development_on_Waiheke_Island.pdf Liu, T., & Yang, X. (2015). Monitoring land changes in an urban area using satellite imagery, GIS and landscape metrics. Applied Geography, 56, 42-54. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2014.10.002 Paudel, S., & Yuan, F. (2012). Assessing landscape changes and dynamics using patch analysis and GIS modeling. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 16, 66-76. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2011.12.003 Plieninger, T. (2006). Habitat loss, fragmentation and alteration - Quantifying the impact of land-use changes on a spanish dehesa landscape by use of aerial phorography and GIS. Landscape Ecology, 21(1), 91-105. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-005-8294-1 Wood, G. E. (1951, 21 June). The New Zealand Official Year-Book, 1950. Wellington : Statistics New Zealand. Retrieved April 04, 2019, from Statistics New Zealand: https://www3.stats.govt.nz/New_Zealand_Official_Yearbooks/1950/NZOYB_1 950.html#idsect1_1_12217

Appendix Appendix1 Name_2012 Veg_Type Broadleaved Indigenous Hardwoods Bush Decieduous Hardwoods Bush Exotic Forest Bush Indigeous Forest Bush Manuka and/or Kanuka Bush Mixed Exotic Shrubland Bush Forest -Harvested Farmland High Producing Exotic Grassland Farmland Low Producing Grassland Farmland Orchard, Vineyard or Other Perennial Crop Farmland Herbaceous Freshwater Vegetation Wetlands Herbaceous Saline Vegetation Wetlands Mangrove Wetlands Build-up Area NA Estuarine Open Water NA Gorse and/or Broom NA Lake or Pond NA Sand or Gravel NA Surface Mine or Dump NA Urban Parkland/Open Space NA

Appendix2

Appendix3