Vegetation of the sand country bordering the Waitakere Range, Auckland: Piha Beach.

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Sand has been laid along most of the west coast of North Auckland, mainly in long stretches such as at Ninety Mile Beach, Kaipara North Head and Muriwai. Piha Beach is one of the few places where sand has been deposited in a bay. This paper traces changes in topography and vegetation of this beach from 1940 to 1974.
Piha Beach (Fig. 1b) lies between two headlands 2.7 km apart. Two streams have their confluence near the mid point of the beach and a third, with a small estuary, reaches the coast near the southern end. Lion Rock at the outlet of this stream is separated from the beach at high tide. Another rock stack known as Monkey Rock or Takutapu Rock is reached by high tides. The beach has a width of about 200 m but sand has blown beyond the beach to liberally coat parts of the land which rises fairly steeply behind it.