Guide: Chris Hollis
Destination: Wairarapa
Date: Saturday 8th March 8am - 5pm
Cost: $75 Payment is required prior to the trip (minimum of 20 people)
Transport: Bus departure points, times and itinerary will be emailed to those who register
Dr Chris Hollis, a Wairarapa-based geologist, spent most of his career as a research scientist atGNS Science where he led research on the geological record of climate change and the environmental impacts of geological events. He continues research as anAdjunct Professor at Victoria University.
Chris will guide us on this trip which will explore three of the many and varied active faults in the Wairarapa, starting and ending with the Wairarapa Fault, with the Masterton and Mokonui Faults included for good measure. The magnitude 8.2 earthquake in 1855 on the Wairarapa Fault caused the largest displacement ever recorded on Earth, over15m horizontally and up to 6 m vertically. We will see this displacement for ourselves at Pigeon Bush south of Featherston. We will then travel north along the fault trace from Featherston to Carterton and visit the Melzer pottery that sits on the upthrown side of the fault on Norfolk Road. Travelling back alongNorfolk Road, we’ll cross the Mokonui and Masterton Faults before examining the latter in detail in Masterton’s Millennium Reserve. Then we visit three more sites to the west and north of Masterton and learn how the Wairarapa Fault has disrupted the landscape through repeated fault movements over tens of millennia.
Guide: Carlos Lehnebach
Destination: East Harbour Regional Park, Lower Hutt
Date: Saturday 8th November departure 9.00am
Cost: $55 (minimum of 20 people)
Transport: Bus departure points, times and itinerary will be emailed to those who register
Dr Carlos Lehnebach is one of the curators of Te Papa’s botanical collection. He has an MSc in Plant Ecology and a PhD inPlant Biology. Carlos’ research describes NZ’s orchid diversity and supports the conservation of its most threatened orchids. These projects include the use of historical plant specimens, DNA analyses and field trips to forests and wetlands to study the orchids and their pollinators. He collaborates with scientists from Otari Wilton’s Bush, Massey University, University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington.
This bus trip will visit the East Harbour Regional Park, Lower Hutt and takes us on easy access tracks along regenerating beech forest and scrub. Participants will learn about the diversity of orchids in NZ and the key features which identify some of the most common species. Along the walk participants will get to see some of the most common species found around the lower North Island and Carlos will talk about current research efforts to conserve rare and threatened species and create living collections. We will also learn about the process of collecting plant material for herbarium collections and the steps botanist follow to take these from the wild to the museum’s collection store.