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Simon Cox GNS Science M. McSaveney GNS Science Slip Stream is a tributary to the Dart River in the South Island of New Zealand. There has been an active landslide here for several thousand years, periodically sending down lobes of debris to gradually build up a large fan in the Dart Valley. There was […]
The Dart Landslide Read More »
The Tasman Glacier is the largest glacier in New Zealand. Its upper section is mostly white as you would expect of a river of ice. However, the lower half is covered with a layer of rock debris about a metre thick. This forms an insulating layer that slows down surface melting and allows the glacier
The growth of Tasman Glacier Lake Read More »
Mount Cook rock avalanche 1991. Lloyd Homer, GNS Science On 14th December 1991 a massive rock avalanche occurred from the East Face of Aoraki /Mount Cook, sending an estimated 14 million cubic metres of rock in a 1.5 kilometre wide cascade across the grand plateau and down onto the Tasman Glacier. It is thought that
The Changing Height of Mount Cook Read More »
K-Pg boundary layer – when the Earth changed forever The K-Pg Boundary (or Cretaceous Paleogene boundary, or K-T boundary as it is still sometimes called) is a layer in the Earth’s crust that marks a very dramatic moment in the history of life on earth about 65 million years ago. There is a huge change
Global Catastophe in a thin rock layer Read More »
To quantify the linkage between weather events and sedimentation in Lake Ohau, a weather station has been set up in the valley at the head of the lake. This is only possible due to kind assistance from the Inkersell family at Lake Ohau Station. I accompanied Heidi Roop to the weather station as it needed a
Weather Station at Lake Ohau Read More »
Ever since its creation by the retreat of a huge glacier at the end of the last ice age, Lake Ohau has been gradually filling up with sediments washed down from the nearby mountain ranges. This is the view looking north from the lake, up towards the Dobson Valley. The valley profile has the classic
Lake Ohau Sediments Read More »
Lake Ohau is one of several very large lakes in the Southern Alps that fill valleys once carved out by huge glaciers during the Ice Age. As the ice retreated, it left spectacular and classic landforms in its wake, including concentric lines of moraines, erratic boulders, ‘U’ shaped valleys and extensive outwash plains. The rapid
Beryllium-10 dating of moraines around Lake Ohau Read More »
The recent magnitude 6.5 Cook Strait and 6.6 Lake Grassmere earthquakes were comparable in size to the ‘quakes that rattled Canterbury in 2010 and 2011. This map of peak ground accelerations for the Lake Grassmere Earthquake shows recordings of up to about 0.75g.(or 0.75 the acceleration due to gravity). One of the notorious and extremely
Liquefaction Effects from the Cook Strait / Lake Grassmere Quakes Read More »
Dougal Townsend of GNS Science was part of a team that flew over Marlborough to assess the impact of the recent earthquakes on the landscape and infrastructure. Although relatively minor compared to those that impacted the Christchurch area in 2010 and 2011, there were nonetheless some isolated, but significant effects. All these photos were taken
Earthquake impacts in Marlborough seen from the air Read More »
Following the earthquakes in southern cook straight, the GeoNet rapid response team left immediately to place seismometers around the area, to allow more detailed monitoring and get better information with which to model the fault ruptures. This meant that when the Mag 6.6 occurred, the enhanced array of seismometers was already in place. Here is
Lake Grassmere Quakes Read More »