Waitomo Glowworm Caves: May 2017

Welcome Back!

This is the final post I will be making. I hope you have enjoyed our adventure.

The Landscape of New Zealand

It is not a surprise that New Zealand is the setting for many movies. It is home to so many physical landforms such as glaciers, fjords, mountains, plains, volcanoes, and hills. There are also beautiful sandy beaches. It seems like there’s a little bit of everything.

The Waitomo caves, specifically, fall under the category of Karst landscapes, rich in limestone and sedimentary rock structure. This final assessment will focus more broadly on the country of New Zealand as a whole. However, there are many different landscapes that are part of New Zealand.

Source:Scenic Pacific
This image shows a map of New Zealand and the area of Waitomo, which we have explored so far. As you can see, the area is land-locked but New Zealand itself is surrounded by water, giving it the features of a coastal landscape as well.

In The Near and Distant Future

LANDSCAPE IN 10,000 YEARS FROM NOW

Wegner’s continental drift and plate tectonics give interesting clues to what the future land of New Zealand will look like in 10,000 years. As you can see in this image, the islands of New Zealand are each on a different plate. The North Island lies on the Australian Plate while The South Island lies on the Pacific Plate. Since plates often move in different directions, this positioning implies that the islands will potentially separate or even fuse together and collide. As this is a relatively short time period in years on Earth, my prediction is that the islands will merely begin their movement in that timeframe with very little noticeable difference.

Source: Evolution Library Berkley
This image shows the different plates and where the continents lay on them. As you can see, New Zealand is split between plates.

However, the coasts of New Zealand are subject to erosion from wave and current activity which could significantly change the shape of the landscape in a shorter timeframe. The goal of waves is to straighten the coast and they accomplish this through concentrating their energy at the headlands along coasts and retracting at bays. This creates the phenomenon known as the longshore current which can erode a lot of land over the years.

Source: Class Connection
This image shows some of the features of the coastal landscape and how wave activity interacts with them. A bay is created by erosion and a headland is land that has yet to be eroded.

LANDSCAPE IN 1,000,000 YEARS FROM NOW

In 1,000,000 years from now, there still won’t be highly noticeable plate movement but the plates will still be slowly making changes to New Zealand’s geography. I predict that the land will continue to slowly drift apart or together. One possible theory of the world’s continental drift in the future can be seen in this video. The continents could continue moving and colliding until they reform Pangea.

Source: Algol

This video shows a theory of future continental drift that results in continents merging. It shows a good representation of how New Zealand might move in the future.

It is difficult to see in the video but New Zealand is slowly moving closer to the equator. As this change occurs, the islands will slowly begin to experience warmer and warmer climates. Also, because New Zealand has active faults, they can expect to see some activity there that may potentially produce new landforms such as mountains.

LANDSCAPE IN 10,000,000 YEARS FROM NOW

It is difficult to predict whether New Zealand will still be around 10, 000, 000 years from now. Some reasons that it may cease to exist are changes in sea level, plate movement, and erosion. It is possible that the sea level could rise so much that it begins to swallow the country whole and it would sink into the ocean. The plates could also affect the country of New Zealand. The theory above shows the continents colliding and combining and suggests that New Zealand could combine with Australia. As the area is rich in limestone and is subject to the processes that affect coastal landscapes, erosion will most likely be one of the biggest factors of change in New Zealand. It could eat away at the landscape so much that it could obliterate it all together.

In conclusion, the Karst and Coastal landscapes processes could lead to serious changes along with the plate movement to the country of New Zealand. But hopefully this area will remain beautiful for years to come, as it experiences changes due to its physical geography.