New Zealand - The Shaky Isles - websites After last weeks Tsunami - I looked around for New Zealand websites that cover many of these topics for viewers to monitor. Below are a few well worth checking out and bookmarking to keep up-to-date on our own shaky Isles activities. Check out the Volcanoe section to monitor the expected Lahar on Mt Ruapehu and also White Island as shes due to have another blow. Sites to monitor New Zealand Hazard Watch Quote: Hazard Watch provides weekly reviews of natural hazard events reported in New Zealand. Hazard Watch is a service of the Institute of Geological & Nuclear Sciences Number of links here to other great sites Institute of Geological & Nuclear Sciences Quote: GNS Seismological Observatory, Volcanological observatory, and Landslide Response Team. Additional information is supplied by a national network of reporters. Images the GNS GNS Landscape Photo Library Good selection to view Quote: The GNS Landscape Photo Library consists of over 150,000 stunning panoramic oblique aerial shots and ground photographs of rural and urban landscapes, landforms and geological features in New Zealand. It also includes many images under such varying themes as animals, fossils, sunsets and waterfalls. Well-known photographer Lloyd Homer has taken more than 70 percent of these photographs.

_________________ Kiwi Jeff

Couple of articles to appear in todays NZ Herald that are of interest and contant interesting information. Also today a series of earthquakes hit Wellington following yesterdays swamp of smaller ones. Watch for warning signs says scientist Quote: Last year he and Government scientist Roy Walters listed geological evidence of 10 major tsunamis that hit New Zealand in the past 6300years. The latest, around AD 1450, was 32m high at Henderson Bay just south of North Cape - five times the height of the Boxing Day wave in Sri Lanka - and rolled up to 3.5km inland as far afield as Abel Tasman National Park and Palliser Bay, near Wellington. It is believed to have been triggered by an undersea volcano in the Kermadec arc northeast of East Cape, an active volcanic area that creates a "tsunami crescent" from the Far North to the eastern Bay of Plenty. ========================================== Quake moved mountains - about 18m Quote: An enormous earthquake near Wellington which struck 150 years ago this Sunday established New Zealand's reputation as the "Shaky Isles". Now scientists have found that it was even bigger than we thought. The rupture on the Wairarapa Fault lifted the eastern edge of the Rimutaka and Tararua Ranges by up to 6m and was said to have pushed the ranges about 12m north of previously adjoining points on the east. It was thought to have measured magnitude 8.1 or 8.2 on the Richter scale, making it New Zealand's biggest earthquake since Europeans began recording them. It generated a tsunami that swept over what is now Wellington Airport and into shops along Lambton Quay. Now geologists Tim Little and David Rodgers have found evidence that the ranges west of the Wairarapa town of Featherston actually moved as much as 18.5m north of the adjoining countryside - by far the biggest horizontal movement along a vertical fault line ever recorded. Dr Little said the magnitude was at least 8.3, the same as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and about six times bigger than the disastrous Napier quake in 1931 that measured 7.8 and killed 256 people. (Magnitude 8 has 31 times as much energy as magnitude 7 on the scale.) But there were only 3000 people in Wellington in 1855. The earthquake's historian, Rodney Grapes, quotes reports at the time that between two and six Maori died when their whare collapsed in the southern Wairarapa, and two other people "died in a fissure in the Manawatu". Far more people will be at risk when the next big quake strikes, as there are now more than 420,000 people in the Wellington region. Quote: The biggest vertical uplift was at Cape Turakirae on the south coast between Wellington and the Wairarapa, where the beach was raised 6m, forming the latest of four raised beaches generated by a series of quakes on the Wairarapa fault over the past 6000 years. The vertical uplift west of Featherston ranged between 0.5m and 3.8m. Dr Little said repeated earthquakes along the fault had created the Rimutaka and Tararua Ranges over millions of years, driven by the force of the great Pacific plate on the Earth's crust diving underneath the Australian plate. 1855 Quake * Struck at 9.17pm on January 23, 1855. * Magnitude 8.3 - NZ's biggest quake in European times. * Killed 4 to 8 people. * Caused the biggest horizontal movement along a vertical fault line ever recorded ===================================================

_________________ Kiwi Jeff

Further details of New Zealands past revealed More details of New Zealand's shaky past were revealed in todays NZ Herald - INTERESTING Tsunami threat to Bay of Plenty real Quote: Tsunamis may pose more of a threat to the Bay of Plenty than previously thought, according to a report. A geological study of the region's coastline has found traces of six major tsunami events over the past 4000 years, each at least five metres in height. Eleven smaller tsunamis - less than 3m - have been recorded officially since 1840. In the past 160 years, the most substantial tsunamis to have affected the Bay of Plenty and eastern Coromandel areas were generated by "remote" or distant sources. The biggest, in 1868, 1877 and 1960, were triggered by very large earthquakes in the subduction zone along the Chile and southern Peru coastlines of South America - directly opposite and facing New Zealand's eastern seaboard. Another tsunami in August 1883 was probably generated by an atmospheric pressure wave from the Krakatau eruption in Indonesia. The Niwa report before the committee suggested the greatest risk to the Bay of Plenty was from tsunamis originating close to shore, such as from an eruption of Mayor (Tuhua) Island or a fault movement in the offshore Taupo Volcanic Zone. A tsunami of that type could reach the coast in 30 to 60 minutes. White Island (Whakaari) has previously been discounted for tsunami generation potential due to its deep-water location. Any big waves are expected to disseminate eastward away from the coast. Tsunamis originating from further afield, such as a landslide in the underwater Hikurangi Trough 250km to 300km away, would take two to three hours to reach the coast. Events of distant origin, say from a South American earthquake, could take 12 hours. The night the east coast sea went crazy Quote: Whitianga harbourmaster Don Ross has experienced a lot of things in his time but nothing as frightening as the tsunami which forced the evacuation of several east coast towns in 1960. It was about 7pm on May 25 when he first learned of the unusual waves rushing into shore and then receding again at great speed. "Dick Cole, who was a fisherman, came knocking on my door and said, 'You'd better come down and have a look at the river, the boats are going up and down'." Mr Ross recalls how the water rushed up over the streets and tore boats from their moorings. The next minute it would be sucked back out to sea - so far that a 120-year-old shipwreck was uncovered and left lying on the sand. Every 20 minutes the cycle repeated, with the water rising and falling 16 feet (4.9m) in under an hour.

_________________ Kiwi Jeff