NZ Geography: Our own gold coast
Our own Gold Coast
In the early 1950s, New Zealand's active dune lands were seen as
"waste areas" and began to be turned into pine forests, golf
courses or housing. By the early 2000s, only about 30% or 39,000
hectares of dune land remained.
This little unit looks at sand dunes and the impact of losing
them. One of our Meet the Locals video looks at the largest
coastal plant protection programme in the Southern hemisphere. It's
at Mason Bay in Stewart Island and it's one of the largest
unmodified sand dune systems in the country.
The videos are:
- Pingao
- Mason Bay Homestead
- Dune Restoration
You'll also find links to websites and learning tools which provide practical activities to develop your students' knowledge and skills. Background information is also provided within the learning activities.
Years: 7, 8 and 9
Levels: 3 and 4
Achievement objectives
Living world
Students will:
(Ecology)
Explain how living things are suited to their particular habitat
and how they respond to environmental changes both natural and
human induced.
Social Studies supporting achievement
objective
Understand how people participate individually and collectively in
response to community challenges.
Duration: About a week.
Learning outcomes
Students will
1. Draw a diagram that shows how sand hills are
formed.
2. Devise a fact box showing why and how a particular sand
dune species has adapted to the sand dune environment
3. Construct a filter and use it to explain how a sand dune
environment acts as a filter for ground and rain water.
4. Use supplied information to compare marram grass to pingao
and draw t charts to show the impacts of both.
5. Take part in a debate and show they understand why people
make decisions that will impact on the environment.
Assessment activity
Activity 5 is a good one - Protecting the land
Teaching and Learning Activities
Starter: What are sand dunes and how are they formed?
1. Show some
sand dune photos and ask how they
are formed.
Provide long strips of paper and in pairs, students can draw their
ideas as a diagram.
Provide the handy hints contained in What are sand dunes? Supply another strip of paper for students to modify their ideas on.
2. As a class, decide which examples best show how sand dunes are formed and then enlarge the diagram in mural form across the wall of the classroom.
3. What lives in and around the dunes?
Share this little gem as an introduction to the plants and animals
that live among the sandhills and on the beach.
If a sandhopper is picked up and released in the sand dunes, it
hops back across the beach towards the sea. If released a kilometre
inland, it will still hop back to its beach.
Catch a sandhopper on a Canterbury beach, on the east coast, and
release it on a West Coast beach and it will try to do the Coast to
Coast! It will hop back towards the east coast.
Sand dunes are home to a number of unique native plant communities,
invertebrates, lizards and birds which exist nowhere else.
Introduced species and human activity have changed the sand dune
environment and have threatened plants like the native p?ngao,
spiders like the katipo and other insects and birds.
Get your students to research a beach or dune critter below and
organise a fact box with a picture and some fascinating
sandhopper-like information that shows how that particular species
is adapted for the sand dune environment. They can place their fact
boxes in the best habitat on the mural.
Invertebrates include:
- kelp flies and midges
- the copper butterfly or the notoreas moth
- wasps and sand-hoppers
- the sand scarab and tiger beetle
- the mighty native seashore earwig
- spiders like the nursery web spider, the jumping spider and the now rare katipo
Lizards include:
- shore skinks
- Taranaki gold striped gecko
- common gecko
Seabirds include:
- New Zealand dotterel
- banded dotterel
- pipi.
- Caspian tern
- white fronted tern
- variable oyster catcher
- gulls
Plants include:
- pingao
- spinifex
- sand coprosma
- sand daphne
- pimelia
4. Sand dunes as filters
Sand dunes enhance and maintain coastal water quality by acting as
filters for rain water and ground water. Investigate how.
As a class discuss
how fresh water gets to the sea
and the ways it may become polluted along the way.
Give each group a one or two litre plastic bottle, some stones,
cotton wool and some sand. Supply snips and a container for mixing
up some grubby water and ask them to make something that will clean
up the dirty water.
Answer: Cut the top of the bottle off just below the neck. Sit this part upside down in the bottle so it forms a funnel. Add the cotton wool, sand and then stones. Trickle the grubby water into the stones and it should emerge clear.
Relate this information back to the sand dune diagram/mural and decide how that ground water is getting into the dune area and where it is filtered. Decide if the impact of development and pollution can be lessened by coastal dune landscapes and dune wetlands and add to the diagram/mural to show how.
5. Protecting the land
Coastal dunes act as a buffer against eroding wave action and
protect the land behind. The dune vegetation also traps wind blown
sand and prevents it being blown inland.
The dune environment is dynamic and always changing. It's a natural and healthy part of this ecosystem and helps maintain biodiversity but change is difficult for humans to accept.
To cater for coastal development we've tried to stabilise the dunes with introduced species like marram grass and lupin. It's altered the dynamics of the dunes and upset the coastal ecosystem.
Sandbinders lets the students compare the introduced marram to the endemic pingao. Using sandbinders as a guide students can organise this information by generating two T charts. One will show the impact of marram grass and the other the impact of planting pingao.
e.g. The impact of marram grass
| Plus | Minus | Interesting |
Discuss the t charts and then watch the
Pingao video to see who's
involved and how people can replant to help sand dune ecosystms
recover.
6. Going to war
Mason Bay, on the west coast of Stewart Island in Rakiura National
Park, has one of New Zealand's largest remaining unmodified dune
systems with a 19 kilometre long beach and amazing beauty and
wildlife that draws visitors from around the world.
This innovative restoration project, will see marram grass
completely removed within twenty years and replaced with the orange
swaths of native sand-binding pïngao. It's the biggest dune
protection project in the Southern Hemisphere.
Discuss in class why species have been introduced to New Zealand and how they have changed the environment. For example:
- Possums, brought in for the fur trade are eating our forests;
- Stoats, brought in to kill the rabbits are killing bird life instead;
- Gorse, brought in so the yellow flowers would remind settlers of home, grows bigger and better and in more places.
Talk about why these introduced species do so well here. Our trees for example have never needed a defence system. In Australia several species are bitter and the leaves are unpalatable. The possums there, leave them alone. Many of our birds were and are ground dwelling and easy pickings for stoats. Our soil is more fertile and the mild climate makes for ideal weed growing conditions.
Go back in time with the video
Mason Bay Homestead to try build
an understanding of why people changed the land. The farmers of
Mason Bay were happy to see marram grass growing on the sandhills
but why?
Share
Going to war at Mason Bay to see the impacts of
the planting and then have a mini debate between the farmers
of the 1930s and a team of scientists. The topic?
Planting
marram grass will benefit all Stewart Islanders.
Now watch the
Dune Restoration video.
7. Active involvement
Discuss examples of coastline change in your area and decide
whether it was once like Mason Bay, or the dune mural on the wall.
Contact your local council and see if there are areas that are
being restored with new plantings. You may be able to help with a
planting day.
Brought to you in partnership with
