New Zealand is an island country located in the south-western Pacific Ocean, near the
center of the water hemisphere.
It consists of a large number of islands, estimated at around 700, mainly remnants of
a larger landmass now beneath the sea.
The landmasses by size are the South Island and North Island separated by the Cook Strait.
The third-largest is Stewart Island located 30 kilometers off the tip of the South Island
across Foveaux Strait.
Other islands are significantly smaller in area.
The three largest islands stretch 1,600 kilometers across latitudes 35° to 47° south.
New Zealand is the sixth-largest island country in the world, with a land size of 268,710
km.
New Zealand's landscapes range from the fiord-like sounds of the southern-west to the sandy beaches
of the subtropical Far North.
The South Island is dominated by the Southern Alps while a volcanic plateau covers much
of the central North Island.
Temperatures commonly fall below 0 °C and rise above 30 °C then conditions vary from
wet and cold on the South Island's west coast to dry, and continental a short distance away
across the mountains and to the tundra-like climate in the Deep South of Southland.
About two-thirds of the land is economically useful, the remainder being mountainous.
The North Island is the most populous island with 4 million residents, and Auckland is
by far the largest metropolitan area in the country by population and urban area.
South Island is the 2nd most populated island with over 1.18 million people and also the
largest island in the nation.
The country is situated about 2,000 kilometers southeast of the Australian mainland across
the Tasman Sea, the closest foreign neighbor to its main islands being Norfolk Island about
750 kilometers to the northwest.
Other island groups to the north are New Caledonia, Tonga, and Fiji.
It is the southernmost nation in Oceania.
The relatively close proximity of New Zealand to the North of Antarctica has made the South
Island a major gateway for scientific expeditions to the continent.
The South Island is the largest landmass in New Zealand and is the 12th-largest island
in the world.
The island is divided along its length by the Southern Alps.
The east side of the island has the Canterbury Plains while the West Coast is famous for
its rough coastlines, high rainfall, a very high proportion of native bush, and glaciers.
The North Island is the second-largest island and the 14th-largest in the world.
It is separated from the South Island by the Cook Strait, with the shortest distance being
23 kilometers.
The North Island is less mountainous than the South Island, although a series of narrow
mountain ranges form a roughly northeast belt that rises up to 1,700 meters.
Much of the surviving forest is located in this belt, and in other mountain areas, and
rolling hills.
The North Island has many isolated volcanic peaks.
The South Island is much more mountainous than the North but shows fewer manifestations
of recent volcanic activity.
There are 18 peaks of more than 3,000 meters in the Southern Alps, which stretch for 500
kilometers down the South Island.
The closest mountains surpassing it in elevation are found not in Australia, but in New Guinea
and Antarctica.
As well as the towering peaks, the Southern Alps include huge glaciers such as Franz Josef
and Fox.
The country's highest mountain is Aoraki / Mount Cook; its height since 2014 is listed as 3,724
meters before December 1991, due to a rockslide and subsequent erosion).
The second highest peak is Mount Tasman, with a height of 3,497 meters.
The North Island Volcanic Plateau covers much of central North Island with volcanoes, lava
plateaus, and crater lakes.
The three highest volcanoes are Mount Ruapehu, Mount Taranaki (2,518 meters, and Mount Ngauruhoe
(2,287 meters (7,503 ft)).
Ruapehu's major eruptions have historically been about 50 years apart, in 1895, 1945,
and 1995–1996.
The 1886 eruption of Mount Tarawera, located near Rotorua, was New Zealand's largest, and
deadliest eruption in the last 200 years, killing over 100 people.
Another long chain of mountains runs through the North Island, from Wellington to East
Cape.
The ranges include Tararua and Kaimanawa.
The lower mountain slopes are covered in native forests.
Above this are shrubs, and then tussock grasses.
Alpine tundra consists of cushion plants and herb fields; many of these plants have white
and yellow flowers.
The mountainous areas of the North Island are cut by many rivers, many of which are
swift and unnavigable.
The east of the South Island is marked by wide, braided rivers such as the Wairau, Waimakariri,
and Rangitata; formed from glaciers, they fan out into many strands on gravel plains.
The total length of the country's rivers is over 180,000 kilometers.
New Zealand's rivers feature hundreds of waterfalls; the most visited set of waterfalls is the
Huka Falls which drains Lake Taupō.
Lake Taupō, located near the center of the North Island, is the largest lake by surface
area in the country.
It lies in a caldera created by the Oruanui eruption, the largest eruption in the world
in the past 70,000 years.
There are 3,820 lakes with a surface area larger than one hectare.
Many lakes have been used as reservoirs for hydroelectric projects.
New Zealand has no land borders.
However, the Ross Dependency, its claim in Antarctica, notionally borders the Australian
Antarctic Territory to the west and unclaimed territory to the east.
Most other countries do not recognize territorial claims in Antarctica.
New Zealand proper is divided administratively into sixteen regions: seven on the South Island
and nine in the North.
They have a physical geographical link with regional boundaries being based largely on
drainage basins.
Among the regions, eleven are administered by regional authorities, while five are unitary
authorities that combine the functions of regional authorities and those of territorial
authorities.
Regional authorities are primarily responsible for environmental resource management, land
management, regional transport, biosecurity, and pest management.
Territorial authorities administer local roading and reserves, waste management, building consents,
the land use and subdivision aspects of resource management, and other local matters.
The Chatham Islands is not a region, although its council operates as a region under the
Resource Management Act.
There are a number of outlying islands that are not included within regional boundaries.
The Kermadecs and the Subantarctic Islands are inhabited only by a small number of Department
of Conservation staff.
Flooding is the most regular natural hazard.
New Zealand is swept by weather systems that bring heavy rain; settlements are usually
close to hill-country areas which experience much higher rainfall than the lowlands due
to the orographic effect.
Mountain streams that feed the major rivers rise rapidly and frequently break their banks
covering farms with water and silt.
Close monitoring, weather forecasting, stopbanks, dams, and reafforestation programs in the
hill country have ameliorated the worst effects.
New Zealand experiences around 14,000 earthquakes a year, some in excess of magnitude 7 (M7).
Since 2010, several large and shallow (all <7 km) earthquakes have occurred immediately
beneath Christchurch.
These have resulted in 185 deaths, widespread destruction of buildings, and significant
liquefaction.
These earthquakes are releasing distributed stress in the Pacific plate from the ongoing
collision with the Indo-Australian plate to the west and north of the city.
Volcanic activity is most common on the central North Island Volcanic Plateau.
Tsunamis affecting New Zealand are associated with the Pacific Ring of Fire.
Droughts are not regular and occur mainly in Otago and the Canterbury Plains and less
frequently over much of the North Island between January and April.
Forest fires were rare in New Zealand before the arrival of humans.
During a designated summer season, lighting a fire in the open is banned on public conservation
land.
A relatively small proportion of New Zealand's land is arable permanent crops that cover
0.27 percent of the land.
7,210 square kilometers of the land is irrigated.
As the world's largest exporter of sheep, New Zealand's agricultural industry focuses
primarily on pastoral farming, particularly dairy and beef, as well as lambs.
Dairy, specifically, is the top export.
In addition to pastoral farming, fishermen harvest mussels, oysters, and salmon, and
horticulture farmers grow kiwifruit, as well as peaches, and nectarines.
New Zealand's distance from world markets and spatial variation in rainfall, elevation,
and soil quality have defined the geography of its agriculture industry.
As of 2007, almost 55 percent of New Zealand's total land area was being used for farming,
which is standard compared to most developed countries.
Three-fourths of it was pastoral land used for raising sheep, beef, and deer.
The amount of farmland has decreased since 2002.
New Zealand's isolated location has simultaneously led to fewer pests and the agriculture industry
with a greater susceptibility to introduced diseases and pests.
A major concern for New Zealand farmers is the rapidly growing wild rabbit population.
Wild rabbits have been agricultural since their introduction to the country in the 1930s.
They cause significant damage to farmlands: eating the grass, and crops, and causing soil
degradation.
Many farmers are worried about their livelihoods and the effects that the rabbits will have
on food supply and trade, as their numbers are quickly growing out of control.
It also has a diverse range of birds, several of which are flightless such as the kiwi (a
national icon), the kākāpō, the takahē, and the weka, and several species of penguins.
Around 30 bird species are currently listed as endangered or critically endangered.
Conservationists recognized that threatened bird populations could be saved on offshore
islands, where, once predators were exterminated, birdlife flourished again.
Many bird species, including the giant moa, became extinct after the arrival of Polynesians,
who brought dogs and rats, and Europeans, who introduced additional dog and rat species,
as well as cats, pigs, ferrets, and weasels Almost half of New Zealand's climate change
emissions are generated by greenhouse gases, mainly methane and nitrous oxide, which come
from farming and agriculture.
Organisms that grow inside of grazing animals' stomachs turn New Zealand's grass into methane.
The increase of carbon dioxide in the air helps the plants to grow faster, but the long-term
effects of climate change threaten farmers with the likelihood of more frequent and severe
floods and droughts.
Growers of kiwifruit, a major export in the horticulture industry of New Zealand, have
experienced difficulties as a result of climate change.
In the 2010s, warm winters did not provide the adequate cool temperatures needed for
the flowering of kiwifruit, and this resulted in a reduction in the yield sizes.
Droughts have also decreased apple production by causing sunburns and a lack of water available
for irrigation.
In contrast, the dairy industry has not been affected and has actually adjusted well to
the effects of climate change.
The South Island contains a little under one-quarter of the population.
Over three-quarters of New Zealand's population live on the North Island, with half living
north of Lake Rotorua, and one-third of the total population living in the Auckland Region.
Auckland is also the fastest-growing region, accounting for 51% of New Zealand's total
population growth (in the two decades up to 2016).
The majority of the indigenous Māori people live on the North Island (87%), although a
little under a quarter (24%) live in Auckland.
New Zealand is a predominantly urban country, with 83.9% of the population living in an
urban area.
About 64.9% of the population live in the 20 main urban areas (population of 30,000
or more) and 43.7% live in the four largest cities of Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington,
and Hamilton.
New Zealand's population density of around 19 inhabitants per square kilometer is among
the lowest in the world.
New Zealand's peoples have been defined by their immigrant origin, the ongoing process
of adaptation to a new land, being changed and changing those who came before.
This process has led to a distinct distribution of culture across New Zealand.
Here language and religion are used as markers for the far richer concept of culture.
These metrics, unfortunately, exclude the political rural-urban divide and also the
full effects of the Christchurch earthquakes on New Zealand's cultural distribution.
New Zealand's most widely spoken language is English (89.8%), however, language, dialect
and accent vary spatially both within and between ethnic groups.
The Māori language (3.5%) is spoken more commonly in areas with large Māori populations
(Gisborne, Bay of Plenty, and Northland).
There are many sub-dialects of Māori, the most pronounced division being between the
northern and southern tribes.
While migration (typically from north to south) was constant throughout the 16–18th centuries,
the south maintained a distinct culture largely due to the lack of cultivation possible at
that latitude.
English is spoken with regional accents relating to the origin of immigrants; for example Scottish
and English 19th century immigration in Southland and Canterbury respectively.
This has also occurred with more recent immigration, with a wide variety of accents being common
in larger cities where immigrant groups have preferentially settled.
These immigrant groups change location with time and accents fade over generations.
A wide variety of other languages make up the remaining approximately 6 percent of New
Zealanders—with Samoan, Hindi, French, and various Chinese dialects being the most common.
These minority foreign languages are concentrated in the main cities, particularly Auckland
where recent immigrant groups have settled.
New Zealand's geographic isolation for 80 million years and island biogeography has
influenced the evolution of the country's species of animals, fungi, and plants.
Physical isolation has not caused biological isolation, and this has resulted in a dynamic
evolutionary ecology with examples of very distinctive plants and animals as well as
populations of widespread species.
Evergreens such as the giant kauri and southern beech dominate the forests.
Native flora and fauna continue to be hard-hit by invasive species.
New Zealand conservationists have pioneered several methods to help threatened wildlife
recover, including island sanctuaries, pest control, wildlife translocation, fostering,
and ecological restoration of islands and other selected areas.
Massive deforestation occurred after humans arrived, with around half the forest cover
lost to fire after the Polynesian settlement.
Much of the remaining forest fell after European settlement, being logged or cleared to make
room for pastoral farming, leaving forest occupying only 23% of the land.
New Zealand had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7/10, ranking it 55th
globally out of 172 countries.
Pollution, particularly water pollution, is one of New Zealand's most significant environmental
issues.
Freshwater quality is under pressure from agriculture, hydropower, urban development,
pest invasions, and climate change, although much of the country's household and industrial
waste is now increasingly filtered and sometimes recycled.
New Zealand's cuisine has been described as Pacific Rim, drawing inspiration from Europe,
Asia, and Polynesia.
This blend of influences has created a mouth-watering range of flavors and food in cafes and restaurants
nationwide.
For dishes that have a distinctly New Zealand style, there's lamb, pork and cervena, salmon,
crayfish (lobster), Bluff oysters, whitebait, paua (abalone), mussels, scallops, pipis and
sweet potato, kiwifruit, tamarillo and pavlova, the national dessert.
Buses are the main form of public transport in New Zealand, with some areas also offering
trains, ferries, and trams.