Day 16 - Logging data

Once upon a time in desert road flats, after revisiting our pyroclastic flow from the day before, our merry band found columns of pumice in the desert wasteland. Not your normal deposition feature, these tabular columns of larger pumices had blown out their matrix leaving behind elutriation pipes.

Our next adventure was into a pyroclastic fall that had been carved out just enough for us (without our backpacks) to squeeze into.

After our usual heated debate (during which Guil, Lydia, and Brad left us to fight for a consensus on ages and lithics) we left for an even cooler rock! A sparkly, shiny, magical colored rock awaited us. A funky little anomaly, it had us throwing around all guesses to what had caused it. Eventually it struck us - LIGHTNING. Possibly the coolest thing we’ve seen, we were busy giving the rock a photo shoot while being taught that it was a fulgurite with vaporized charcoal and reheated pumice.

After, we learned about the charcoal from burnt trees in the pyroclastic flow and some of us even drew trees with the burnt trees!

Then a new challenge greeted us - but this time we were all competing with each other. To help with a paper on pyroclastic flow direction based on tree falls, we were set off to document the direction of all possible charcoal trees in the area. Splitting into 3 teams we swept the entire area furiously scribbling down directions and giving each tree its own GPS tag.

Hours later, the three teams converged: John and the Curly Bois, Finding Trees and Kicking Ash, and Tree Time with the Pretty Girls. We totaled at around 920 data entries for the paper. We then all did rose diagrams for our own data and Guil did a big overall one as well. We did find a majority of the trees laying North South interestingly enough. Stay tuned for our upcoming paper - we were promised an acknowledgment if our data was useful.

As the sun set on the distant volcanoes, we concluded our day and headed to dinner happily ever after.

The end.

Loren & Margaret

Comments

Day 15: A Slippery Slope

After exploring the realm of effusive volcanoes at Ruapehu, we ventured out into the unknown world of explosive volcanism. We started our day with a hot mystery to solve: fall or flow? We were taken to 2 outcrops that were textbook perfect examples of each volcanic feature and set upon characterizing them. Two very different pyroclastic depositions were evident--one with big white pumicey clasts with no beds and one tall hill with clear layering and varied grain size-- but there was a steamy debate as to which was flow and which was fall. Left without the guidance of Guil, Lydia, and Brad, the gang was left to our own devices to figure out which was which. Leaving our mystery up in the air, we headed to our third stop - a hill. Bushwhacking our way up through towering grasses, we traversed our way to a place that looked suspiciously like the second outcrop. After another heated debate amongst the students, we eventually learned that this was, in fact, a combo of pr...

Days 20 and 21: Conrad's Birthdays

May 28th— the long awaited day—the big day—the only day—Conrad’s 19th birthday. Unfortunately for him, the weather was rainy and chilly and mushy on his day; but fortunately for him, he was one year older and could finally kick it with the rest of the big kids. After wishing our first of many happy birthdays to C-rad, we GABEd it up for a day at Wai-o-tapu. “Wai-o-tapWHO?” I hear you scream. Dear readers I’m so glad you asked. A bubbly geothermal wonderland, Wai-o-tapu was the perfect example of New Zealand’s incredibly efficient magma sourced geothermal system that produces 1200 megawatts of power. For scale, just one megawatt powers 1,000 homes. If that doesn’t make you say, “wowie!” I don’t know what will. After learning from our resident experts about the thermodynamics behind the system, we had time to romp around the park and watch the mud bubbles rise and pop and boil, resisting the urge to jump into the steamy mess. We did, however, get to s...

Day 7: Wow in Westport

Wow. What a day. Today started for me with a healthy breakfast of rice krispers and toast with peanut butter and honey. But not just normal honey, really good honey. I brushed my teeth after the meal and was then ready for an exciting day in the field! Our first stop was back at the beautiful Cape Foulwind, where we trekked to a lighthouse that overlooked the beach where we’d spent the previous day. After learning that this was, in fact, not supposed to be our first stop we walked back to the van and to another point along the coast. This was also not the area we were looking for, but luckily the rocks proved satisfactory for our purposes. Our subject was a massive massive grey outcrop, and our object was to find out just what this big boy was made of. After a quick seminar in mineral properties based on light, mechanics, and shape we were able to determine that the outcrop was of igneous origin based on the interlocking nature of its grains and that it was composed of feldspar megac...

NZ Maymester 2019!

Search This Blog