Abstract:
The livestock transport movement is the representative movement driven by humans, the environment, and livestock in livestock study. The main body of this movement is livestock, and humans and the environment are the driving factors. This movement can reflect the dependence and influence of livestock on external factors. Therefore, in areas with large numbers of livestock farming, it is crucial to study the possibility and consequences of external factors on livestock transport movements. This paper focuses on the two main islands of New Zealand, the North and South Islands, and will cover the transportation movement of dairy cattle and beef cattle in sixty-six territorial authorities (TAs) of sixteen regions. A series of statistical and geographic information systems (GIS) were used to obtain density maps for the human-dominated and environmental variables, as well as the peak movement of dairy and beef cattle, indicating that the peak movement for dairy and beef cattle was around May and that infrastructure and climate conditions in the North Island were more suitable for cattle farming. This study used modelling techniques to model the explanatory variables and flows of dairy cattle and beef cattle transportation movements between sixty-six TAs. Subsequently, Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) was used to assess the spatial distribution of the relationship between independent and dependent variables to examine the influence of external factors on the outflow and inflow of dairy and beef cattle across regions. Spatial Interaction (SI) modelling showed that the flow of dairy and beef cattle was positively or negatively affected by population occupation, port distance, rainfall, insolation duration, and vapour pressure, but at the same time changed with time. In addition, GWR modelling showed that the spatial distribution of the relationship between the inflow and outflow of dairy and beef cattle and explanatory variables was dominated by the number of dairy and beef cattle. The more the number of dairy and beef cattle,
the explanatory variables would have a more noticeable impact on dairy and beef cattle inflow and outflow. Therefore, exploring SI and GWR modelling to cattle transport movement flows in the New Zealand region demonstrates the potential of spatial technology as an accurate and robust mapping and assessment tool.