4.0 Impacts of Ash Fall on New Zealand Pastoral Agriculture and Arable Cropping
4.1 Background
Areas at risk from volcanic activity encompass large productive dairy, deer, sheep and beef and arable farms from Taranaki, south to Manawatu, across to the East Coast and up to Northland. The area affected by a volcanic eruption is dependent on the wind direction at the time of the eruption.
As intensive agricultural farming is young relative to volcanic activity, there is little historical data on the effects of ash showers on land farmed intensively for agricultural production. Although there have been several eruptions in the world that have affected agricultural land, the depths of ash on the land have all been less than 50mm in recent history. Consequently, much of the predicted impacts outlined in this report for the four depths of ash are conjecture and based on the impacts on plants and soil of various ash thicknesses as observed by Folsom (1986) and Blong (1984) and extrapolation of impacts from eruptions of lesser ash depths such as Mt St Helens, Mt Ruapehu and Hekla (Iceland). More research is required on simulating ash showers to determine the actual effects and methods for rehabilitating the land.
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