Out and about - Auckland

I recently traveled up to Auckland to speak at the annual 'Planning for a volcanic crisis' short course - this is a two day course designed for people involved in all aspects of natural hazard management, emergency managers, local council and planners etc.  Auckland is a great place to hold this course as it is built upon a volcanic field made up of over 50 separate volcanoes! 

Volcanoes in NZ

There are three types of volcanoes in New Zealand:
*Cone eg. Ruapehu and Egmont,
*Caldera eg. Taupo,
*Volcanic field eg. Auckland and Northland,

You can find more info on the different types of volcanoes here .  

In Auckland each eruption has occurred at a different location, with a single 'hot spot' of magma about 100km below the city, this means that any new activity will come from a different area - not one of the existing volcanoes. Today most of these volcanoes have been quarried, made into parks or been built on.

The field will probably erupt again as overseas examples show that volcanic fields can last for a very long time (over 1million years) and the Auckland field is only around 250,000yrs old - if it helps volcanic fields typically produce small
infrequent eruptions compared to the other types.    You can get more information, and see how GeoNet monitors the Auckland Volcanic field here

Islington Bay

The last eruption in Auckland was about 600yrs ago at Rangitoto Island, we headed over on a ferry to check it out! We had great weather for the trip as well! 

Rangitoto Island was formed during two eruptions, 600 and 550years ago, it is 260m high and can be seen just North-East of Auckland city.  Thanks to DoC Rangitoto is pest free and also the home to the worlds largest Pohutukawa forest!  

You can see various neat geological features on the island, and even explore lava tunnels. These are formed from paehoehoe lava flows, where the exterior cooled and crusted over creating a tube that allowed the molten lava within to continue flowing, as the lava flow decreased at the end of the eruption, these tunnels were left behind. (if you visit take a torch, sturdy shoes and don't think of wetas!!)


A video of some of the sights below...

Are you prepared?   Get Ready, Get Thru   

Out and about - Christchurch Day 2

Hi-viz swarm at Brighton

All of the forum attendees donned their hi-viz vests, and a sea of orange and yellow went out to visit sites of interest to see the physical impacts of the earthquake and the progress with recovery.

One of the sites included the (now old) Brighton sub-station which sunk quite a bit due to the liquefaction -you can see in the photos below - a new substation has now been built.

Note the door!

On a slight lean!

Another interesting site we visited was the Bromley Wastewater
treatment plant (just a tad stinky!) Their main problem to face was the large amount of silt coming into the plant, with not much physical damage caused by the actual ground movement.

The various treatment tanks

This was slightly unnerving!

Luckily they had these!

Out and about - Christchurch

Today i am in Christchurch for the annual 'National Lifelines Forum', this is where members from our energy, telecommunications, transportation and water sectors gather and discuss experiences/lessons etc from the past year. Obviously this year there are a lot of discussions on the Canterbury earthquakes and how each sector was damaged and dealt with the various challenges this presented.  GeoNet (including myself) will also be presenting tomorrow.

Going for a walk in the sun at lunchtime,  it was strange to see the beautiful buildings in various pieces, and the skyline full of large cranes, but nice to see the businesses still open - even if they had to move to quirky temporary sites.

One place that i was please to see open was the Canterbury museum, where I popped in to visit a friend, he kindly took me around and showed what little damage the museum sustained, thanks to extensive earthquake-proofing some years ago, i also got a sneak peek at an upcoming exhibit -  Hearts for Christchurch "which showcases an amazing array of more than 4,000 stitch-craft hearts from around the world. The project of an inspirational Napier woman, Evie Harris, who started creating and gathering the hearts after the February earthquake."

I then went to see the new 'container mall' at Cashel street, it is amazing and it was great to see so many people out enjoying the sun and shopping.
Pics below . . .

Cute Kia Kaha 'flower'

Arts Centre

Cashel St  'Container Mall'

Bridge of Remembrance

 

Volcano cameras ~ Bugs, aliens and more!

This picture was sent in on the weekend (great spotting, thanks Ross) its a great pic as you can see a black-backed gull flying past (and you can actually see the top of ) Mt Egmont /Taranaki! 

It got me thinking to some other strange things we have seen on the volcano cameras over the years ....

On the left, a spider has a made a home on the Ruapehu cam, and on the right a fly is hanging out with Dino on White Island.

You can also see Dino supporting the All Blacks here



We often get emails in from people curious about black dots (or aliens) showing up on the webcams:

I can assure you these are not aliens!  When the sun is shining directly onto our cameras, they find it a bit bright so the sun is shown as a black dot!

At white Island you can also see the robot-looking camera reflected onto the image.






And here a red 'alien' caused by another camera reflection.

We often see the helicopters landing on White Island and various tour groups (so next time make sure and wave)



To see the current pictures from the volcano cams click here they are updated every 15 minutes.

Out in the field - Taranaki 1.1

The second part of our day was spent out in the field, the TRC have rain gauges at a few of our sites so they travel out there often and have a look at our sites to same sure they are looking ok and help keep our sites tidy (clearing overgrowth, fixing fences and aerials etc) 


First stop was the North Egmont visitors centre to our seismograph site NEZ which was all in order (despite the rain and hail) and after checking the councils rain gauge (very full)  we went to our next site.

DREZ

DREZ  is located on a dairy farm, and once we waited for the cows to meander their way to the milking shed, we found the site. With no cows to eat the grass within the fence, it tends to get quite long and can even block the solar panels, so Andrew took to it with a weed-eater and its all pretty again!


We keep detailed information on all of our sites, including landowner details and precise details on how to get to each site. Since its construction in 2008, the farmer has moved some fence-lines and the site is in a new paddock, so i made notes of the new directions to the site, and this will be updated on our DELTA database - where this information is kept.

DREZ after clearing the grass

German Hill

We then did the same at our German hill cGPS site.

Out in the field ~ Taranaki 1.0

This week i traveled up to New Plymouth (to some not-so-fantastic weather)  for a meeting, and also i met up with Andrew a Hydrology Officer from the Taranaki Regional Council (TRC).  Back in the pre-GeoNet days the council looked after a small network of instruments around the area, we have since taken these over, upgraded them and added a few more sites (you can see the network here).  Due to their experience and knowledge of the network, the council have a unique relationship with GeoNet where their staff help maintain our current sites and occasionally help our technicians build new sites - this saves a long travel time as our technicians are based in Taupo and Lower Hutt!
 
Our first stop was the Taranaki Emergency Management Office (TEMO) which is home to one of our volcano cameras (which you can see on our website here), strong-motion instrument NPCS and a repeater-hub where data from other sites goes to TEMO and is then sent on to our data centres (at Wairakei and Lower Hutt).

TEMO

Volcano camera (circled) New Plymouth city in the background

The strong-motion instrument.

Data from other sites coming into the 'repeater hub'

Volcanoes, a Dinosaur and Rugby?

So its a big weekend rugby wise all around New Zealand - go teams!

As you know GeoNet monitors all of New Zealand's active volcanoes - one of which is home to 'Dino the dinosaur' - normally he just chills out in the crater of White Island, but he has recently decided to show his support to the boys in black!

So we hope everyone has a fantastic weekend, and you can see Dino here (during the day!!)