Knowledge of past climate variability is essential for understanding present and future climate trends. This study used Halocarpus biformis (pink pine) ring-width chronologies to investigate palaeotemperature history in Westland, New Zealand. The ensuing reconstruction is among the longest palaeoseries produced for New Zealand to date. It is in good agreement with other tree-ring-based records, and with instrumental (both local and hemispheric) data. Thirteen pink pine chronologies were developed. Ring-width measurements were detrended using the Regional Curve Standardisation method to retain as much low-frequency variance as possible. Crossdating revealed the existence of a strong common signal among trees. Inter-site comparison indicated that a common control mechanism affected tree growth not only within sites, but also across sites. To determine whether climate was the main factor that controlled the growth of pink pine in Westland, correlation and response function analyses were employed. Temperature, precipitation and the Southern Oscillation Index were tested for their relationship with tree growth. Mean monthly temperature was identified as the primary growth-limiting factor. Chronologies were positively correlated with temperature over an extended period (5-17 months), and climate response modelling showed that temperature explained 11-60% variance in the tree-ring data. The highest and most stable correlations occurred between tree growth and summer (January-March) temperatures. Tree-ring data from the six sites that contained the strongest temperature signal were combined, and the Westland Regional Chronology (WRC) was developed. The WRC was then used to reconstruct January-March temperatures back to A.D. 1480. The calibration model explained 43% of the variance in temperature, and all calibration and verification tests were passed at high levels of significance. The reconstruction showed that temperatures in Westland have been following a positive trend over the last 520 years. The coolest 25-year period was 1542-1566, while temperatures reached their maximum in 1966-1990. Spectral analysis of the Westland palaeotemperature record revealed cycles at periods of about 3, 5-6, 11, 14, 22, 45 and 125 years. This study also confirmed that climate response is species-dependent. A separate exercise, which compared two species from the same site, demonstrated that while pink pine's growth was mainly influenced by summer temperatures, Libocedrus bidwillii was affected by conditions at the beginning of the growing season. However, the temperature signal in Westland's Libocedrus bidwillii was insufficient to produce a reliable reconstruction. It might be because the climate signal in this species was obscured by disturbances, as was shown in the final section of this project. Frequent growth releases and suppressions implied that Libocedrus bidwillii integrated both major (Alpine Fault earthquakes) and minor (windthrow) disturbances in its ring widths. Pink pine, on the other hand, was not sensitive to disturbance, and was therefore a better indicator of palaeotemperatures in Westland. This research has strengthened the New Zealand network of chronology sites, and confirmed that pink pine has great dendroclimatic value. The last 520 years of temperature fluctuations were reconstructed with a high degree of fidelity - the model developed in this thesis is currently the most accurate estimate of a temperature-growth relationship in the country.
This thesis investigates landscape disturbance history in Westland since 1350 AD. Specifically, I test the hypothesis that large-magnitude regional episodes of natural disturbance have periodically devastated portions of the landscape and forest, and that these were caused by infrequent earthquakes along the Alpine Fault. Forest stand history reconstruction was used to determine the timing and extent of erosion and sedimentation events that initiated new forest cohorts in a 1412 ha study area in the Karangarua River catchment, south Westland. Over 85 % of the study area was disturbed sufficiently by erosion/sedimentation since 1350 AD to initiate new forest cohorts. During this time four episodes of catchment-wide disturbance impacted the study area, and these took place about 1825 AD ± 5 years (Ruera episode), 1715 AD ± 5 years (Sparkling episode), 1615 AD ± 5 years (McTaggart episode), and 1445 AD ± 15 years (Junction episode). The three most recent episodes disturbed 10 %, 35-40 % and 32-50 % respectively of the study area. The Junction episode disturbed at least 6 % of the study area, but elimination of evidence by more recent disturbances prevented an upper limit being defined. The three earliest episodes correspond to the date-ranges for three Alpine Fault earthquakes from geological data, and are the only episodes of disturbance within each date-range. An earthquake cause is also consistent with features of the disturbance record: large portions of the study area were disturbed, disturbance occurred on all types 'of landforms, and terrace surfaces were abandoned upstream of the Alpine Fault. On this basis erosion/sedimentation induced by Alpine Fault earthquakes has disturbed 14-20 % of the land surface in the study area per century. Storms and other non-seismic erosional processes have disturbed 3-4 % per century. To examine the importance of the Alpine Fault earthquakes to forest disturbance throughout Westland, I collated all available data on conifer stand age structures in the region and identified dates of disturbance events from 55 even-aged cohorts of trees. Three region-wide episodes of forest disturbance since 1350 AD were found in this sample, and these matched the three Alpine Fault earthquake-caused episodes found in the Karangarua. Forest disturbance at these times was widespread across Westland over at least 200 km from Paringa to Hokitika, and originated from both tree fall and erosion processes. This disturbance history can explain the long-observed regional conifer forest pattern in Westland, of a predominance of similar-sized stands of trees and a relative lack of small-sized (young) stands. The many similar-sized stands are a consequence of synchronous forest disturbance and re-establishment accompanying the infrequent Alpine Fault earthquakes, while the dominance of mature stands of trees and relative lack of young small-sized trees in stands is explained by the long lapsed time since the last Alpine Fault earthquake (c. 280 years). I applied the landscape disturbance history information to the existing geological data to reconstruct the paleoseismicity of the Alpine Fault since 1350 AD. Best estimates for the timing of the most recent three rupture events from these data are 1715 AD ± 5 years, 1615 AD ± 5 years and 1445 AD ± 15 years. Earthquake recurrence intervals were variable, ranging from about 100 years to at least 280 years (the lapsed time since the last event). All three events caused forest and geomorphic disturbance over at least a 200 km section of Fault between the Karangarua and Hokitika Rivers, and were probably single rupture events. Suppressions in cross dated tree-ring chronologies in the western South Island suggest that the last rupture occurred in 1717 AD, and extended as a single rupture from Haupiri to Fiordland, a distance along the Fault of 375 km.
Six stands located on different land forms in mixed old-growth Nothofagus forests in the Matiri Valley (northwest of South Island, New Zealand) were sampled to examine the effects of two recent large earthquakes on tree establishment and tree-ring growth, and how these varied across land forms. 50 trees were cored in each stand to determine age structure and the cores were cross-dated to precisely date unusual periods of radial growth. The 1968 earthquake (M = 7.1, epicentre 35 km from the study area) had no discernible impact on the sampled stands. The impact of the 1929 earthquake (M = 7.7, epicentre 20 km from the study area) varied between stands, depending on whether or not they had been damaged by soil or rock movement. In all stands, the age structures showed a pulse of N. fusca establishment following the 1929 earthquake, with this species dominating establishment in large gaps created by landslides. Smaller gaps, created by branch or tree death, were closed by both N. fusca and N. menziesii. The long period of releases (1929-1945) indicates that direct earthquake damage was not the only cause of tree death, and that many trees died subsequently most likely of pathogen attack or a drought in the early 1930s. The impacts of the 1929 earthquake are compared to a storm in 1905 and a drought in 1974-1978 which also affected forests in the region. Our results confirm that earthquakes are an important factor driving forest dynamics in this tectonically active region, and that the diversity of earthquake impacts is a major source of heterogeneity in forest structure and regeneration.
