The concept of geoparks was first introduced in the first international conference on geoparks held in China in 2004. Here in New Zealand, Kiwis are accustomed to national parks, land reserves, marine reserves, and urban cities and regional parks. The concept of these protected areas has been long-standing in the country, whereas the UNESCO concept of geoparks is still novel and yet to be established in New Zealand. In this dissertation, I explored the geopark concept for better understanding of its merits and examined the benefits of geotourism attractions as a sustainable economic development strategy to retrieve a declining rural economy. This research is focused on Kaikoura as a case study with geological significance, and emphasizes pre-earthquake existing geological heritages and new existing geological heritages post-earthquake to determine whether the geopark concept is appropriate and what planning framework is available to process this concept proposal should Kaikoura be interested in future.
The magnitude 7.1 Christchurch earthquake broke off an enormous chunk of Castle Rock in the Port Hills which has tumbled down towards the Lyttelton tunnel. View from Morgan's Valley (-43.578037° 172.714828°).
Liquefaction-induced lateral spreading during earthquakes poses a significant hazard to the built environment, as observed in Christchurch during the 2010 to 2011 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence (CES). It is critical that geotechnical earthquake engineers are able to adequately predict both the spatial extent of lateral spreads and magnitudes of associated ground movements for design purposes. Published empirical and semi-empirical models for predicting lateral spread displacements have been shown to vary by a factor of <0.5 to >2 from those measured in parts of Christchurch during CES. Comprehensive post- CES lateral spreading studies have clearly indicated that the spatial distribution of the horizontal displacements and extent of lateral spreading along the Avon River in eastern Christchurch were strongly influenced by geologic, stratigraphic and topographic features.
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This one was really flowing out of the ground.
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These were scattered across the park.
Robbie watches a sand volcano smother his driveway.
Debra points at the beginnings of a sand volcano not long after the big earthquake.
Sand volcanoes put the silt all over the road.
An usual thing to see coming from the ground in Hoon Hay, Christchurch.
The earthquake knocked over the bird bath.
Laura and Max return to Christchurch from their holiday in California and inspect the earthquake-caused sand volcano in their front lawn.
(I righted the bird bath after the initial earthquake. None of the after-shocks were sufficient to knock it over again.)
Laura, Nicola, and Debra watch a sand volcano build in the Wyn Street gutter.
One of the many sand volcanos erupting from the ground after the Christchurch earthquake.