From Historical Maps to Remote Sensing: Reconstructing Land Use Changes on Norfolk Island over the Past 250 Years

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to quantify land cover and vegetation changes over the past 250 years on Norfolk Island, Australia, a remote island important for its cultural heritage and biodiversity. We collated over 130 historical maps and aerial photos from various archives, of which we georeferenced 80. Supervised classification and manual digitization were used to extract detailed land cover information on vegetation cover from 10 historical maps and datasets. While the classification and symbology used to represent vegetation on the different maps varied over time, we were able to track changes in vegetation cover on the island. We found that after the first (colonial) settlement, non-agricultural vegetation cover was at its lowest during the 1940s, and has since then expanded. We found high constancy of land cover patterns on the island since 1840 onwards. Historical maps thus provide an understanding of the dynamics that shape the present landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• Historical maps
• Pacific Ocean islands
• historical aerial photos
• land cover
• map accuracy
• vegetation cover

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Norfolk Island National Parks (Melinda Wilson, Joel Christian, Nigel Greenup, Craig Doolan), Parks Australia, the Registry of the Norfolk Island Regional Council (Cheryl Sarlu LeCren), Rob Ryan, Tom Sapienza, Susan Prior, Troy Hamilton-Irvine, Leah Dann and many members of the Norfolk Island community for their help in making maps available for the study and for their support and knowledge. Government's National Environmental Science Program (NESP) through the Threatened Species Recovery (TSR) Hubs. We would like to thank the reviewers for their time and helpful comments, which we feel have contributed to the paper and its communication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The historical maps and aerial photos used in this research are mostly openly available as detailed in Table S1. Some of the historical maps were not openly available and were either purchased by us or provided to us subject to third-party restrictions. We will make many of the historical maps and aerial photos available to the public (if there are no copyright issues) via ArcGIS Online following publication.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research received support from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program (NESP) through the Threatened Species Recovery (TSR) Hub and from Parks Australia.

Notes on contributors

Noam Levin

Noam Levin is a Professor and Head of the Remote Sensing Lab in the Department of Geography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 2008. He also holds an honorary appointment at the University of Queensland. Noam studies geographical and environmental patterns and processes of land cover changes in the face of human- and climate-induced changes using remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Noam has published more than 100peer- reviewed articles on these and other related topics. In his work, he combines fieldwork, remote sensing of satellite images, spatial analysis of GIS layers, statistical analyses and modelling. Noam’s current research focuses on remote sensing of night lights as indicators of human activity, wildfires, conservation planning over spatial scales from local to global, landscape ecology, historical geography and aeolian processes.

Salit Kark

Salit Kark is a Professor and Head of The Biodiversity Research at The University of Queensland, Australia with interests in conservation science, ecology and biodiversity. She works on a range of conservation, environmental and ecological areas and collaborates with multiple groups worldwide across terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystems to help solve key environmental questions and conservation challenges. We mentor and train future generations of conservation scientists and practitioners, working with local communities and partners internationally to enhance conservation that supports livelihoods and communities. Kark is very interested in islands and their conservation that benefits both humans and nature. She has been leading research on Norfolk Island since 2016.