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!!)

 

Out in the field - the perils of lightning!

Last week one of our Senior Technicians - Dan, went down to Wednesday Peak and Welcome Bay in Fiordland (here) to replace and upgrade some radio gear that had recently been damaged by lightning. These sites have the important task of transmitting data from the tsunami monitoring site PUYT (Puysegur) back to  HQ.

Wednesday Peak

Helicopter leaving the site

 

Dan then traveled to the other end of NZ, to North Cape (here) (along with a technician from Maritime NZ), to investigate an outage of the tsunami monitoring site NCPT (North Cape). When they arrived it was clear that the lighthouse next to the site had sustained a direct lightning strike and was effectively destroyed, the lightning had also destroyed all of the equipment for our tsunami gauge. Although lightning protection was installed, it was ineffective against such a large strike. Everything at the site was replaced, with divers traveling within the next week to replace the actual tsunami sensors in the water - as the lightening traveled all the way down (over 250m) to the sensors in the water!.  

North Cape

Lighthouse and GNS Site(right)

Lightning damage inside the cabinet

Although traveling to these remote locations involves long hours and hard work, the technicians do get to see some amazing views of our beautiful country, and occasionally some wildlife... 

 
This whale was spotted in Te Waewae Bay.
















Thanks to Daniel for taking the pics and telling me what he got up to (and for putting up with my pestering)

Exploring the website - ShakeNZ

When you go to the GeoNet homepage you will see a map of NZ covered in small squares, this is 'ShakeNZ'.  Each one of the squares gets near real-time shaking (this means in a few minutes, not right away) from our instruments out in the field.   So within a few minutes of an earthquake, you can look at the map and get a rough idea of where it was and the intensity of the shaking.

The key thing here is actually to do with the key!   The pic on the right is the key for the map, which shows intensity, not magnitude!   So when there is an earthquake and you can see an area of coloured squares, they are showing the intensity of shaking not the size.

The numbers correspond to the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale, this is a really handy way to describe the effects of an earthquake, and is generally better than using the magnitude alone (as a mag 4 quake at 5km depth will produce a higher shaking intensity than a mag 4 at 10km depth)  It goes from MM 1 (barely felt by a few people) to MM 12 (complete devastation).

<---  This is what the map looks like with no activity, small blue/purple squares (blank = no data)

     

 
This is the map after a mag 5.5 earthquake, 30km deep near Wellington. -->



 






Now occasionally when we have technical issues ( the instrument is having a bad day, or a tech is out fixing something)  there will be a 'rogue' square!  Its usually pretty easy to see that its an error and not a large earthquake as there is just one square showing a high intensity, and when there is an actual event multiple squares will be 'lit up' .  
The map on the left shows one station/square showing an orange square, or 7 intensity of shaking, if this was an actual event the squares close by would also show some level of intensity.  There are more examples here.


You can also use an interactive version here  and go from 60min to the present - a cool way at looking at the squares light up following an earthquake.   

Felt Reports: Then & Now

GeoNet collects earthquake data directly from the public via our website where people can answer questions about what they felt during an earthquake. We use this feedback to assist with mapping the distribution of shaking intensity of earthquakes(see here ) and with scenario planning for future earthquakes.

These days its a quick questionarre on our website, however, back in the early 1900s (pre-internet -shock horror) things were slightly different! There was no GeoNet and no network of instruments across New Zealand.

For many years dedicated volunteers completed reports, filling in paper questionnaires and sending them to the observatory in Wellington.  Pre-1930s these, along with newspaper clippings, were used by scientists to calculate where an earthquake was located.  This was difficult in NZ as most people lived by the coast, so not much was known about the effects of earthquakes further inland.

Christchurch 1921

We keep all of these old records here at GeoNet
and they can be quite amusing to read, i have scanned 3 examples of 'felt reports' and one old Press article for you to look at here -->

Christchurch 1921

So next time you feel an earthquake and are (very paitently of course) awaiting the details from GeoNet, think back to the earlier years - they never got to find out how big the earthquakes were! 

Palmerston North 1923