Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand abstracts

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Enhanced dust deposition by trees recently established on degraded rangeland

Hamish McGowan¹ and Nick Ledgard²

¹School of Geography, Planning and Architecture, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane 4072, Australia. Email: h.mcgowan@uq.edu.au
²New Zealand Forest Research Institute Ltd, Ilam, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Abstract  Results from 2 years of dust deposition monitoring in a 10-year-old Pinus nigra plantation near Lake Tekapo are presented. They show that recently established plantations significantly enhance dust deposition rates. This could reverse a cycle of soil loss and enhance vertical accretion of soil, which would provide more options for future land use. However, observations indicate that even under such enhanced conditions for soil formation, it would take several thousand years to replace the soil lost to erosion since European farming practices were first introduced to the northern section of the Mackenzie Basin.

Keywords  degraded rangeland; wind erosion; dust deposition; foehn; plantation; soil formation

R04002 Received 11 February 2004; accepted 20 January 2005; Online publication date 30 August 2005
Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand Volume 35, Number 3, September, 2005, pp 269–277

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