Day 5: New Zealand (41°S 174°E)
I haven’t gotten a chance to post about New Zealand yet, even though we’ve been here for four days! The longest time we’ve stayed at any one location. It’s probably because we had to sail for a really long time to get from Iceland to here because it’s all the way in the south-western Pacific Ocean. The Alpine Fault runs down most of New Zealand’s south island and forms a transform boundary between the Pacific and Indo-Australian plates. A transform boundary is when two plates are sliding past each other, this causes lots of earthquakes. We took a helicopter ride over the south island to look at the Alpine Fault, I took this great picture!
There are a TON of earthquakes in New Zealand. About 200 a year that are big enough to be felt by people nearby, though most of them are small (below magnitude of 5), usually about only one earthquake of a magnitude of 6+ per year. The Taupo Volcanic Zone is on the North Island of New Zealand and is a highly active volcanic area. Scientists believe it is so active because the earth’s crust below the zone is very thin (could be as little as 10 miles). The North Island is known for its volcanism and it is much less mountains than the South. Though most of the boundary is a transform boundary there is area in the South Island where the Pacific Plate has subducted beneath the Indo-Australian plate and created the Southern Alps.
This is a list of the sizable earthquakes in recorded history:
Map showing the Alpine Fault and the transform boundary:
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