Category: Environments

End of Summer Snowline Survey | NIWA

New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research [NIWA] has just carried out and published their annual aerial glacier survey, and for all sorts of reasons apart from their most experienced glaciologist taking part, and the pilot, a very experienced mountaineer, both being old friends and integral to it’s success, there is my own interest having traversed many glaciers over decades.

In fact looking back many that I tussled with, negotiating crevasses and ‘schrunds etc. have subsequently ceased to exist. A testament to warmer climes!

I took this photo at a similar time of year to the survey – it’s of Mt Cook and Mt Tasman, with the Hochstetter Icefall draining the Grand Plateau, taken from across the Tasman Glacier in Mt Cook National Park but back in about 1975.

Note the horizontal lines – evidence of lateral moraines, at the lower left and right. Well back in the 50s the Tasman Glacier [flowing right to left] was apparently at that level, and this was confirmed in a conversation I once had with the late Mick Bowie, a very famous mountain guide of this era.
Mt Cook and Mt Tasman

Here is the press release and video of the survey, courtesy of NIWA’s web site [and well done Andy and Trevor]:

NIWA has carried out aerial surveys of over 50 of the South Island’s glaciers every year for more than four decades. The survey’s record the snowline on the glaciers at the end of each summer and provide a time line of glacier-climate interaction stretching back to 1977. Look at the results of the 2018 survey – carried out after New Zealand’s warmest summer on record.

Read more and watch the video at the source: End of Summer Snowline Survey | NIWA

The great New Zealand lupin debate and why it matters

First we need to talk about the lupin’s favoured environment being mainily the braided rivers which drain the Southern Alps – rivers that find it impossible to run in a straight line, and be anything other than dynamic.

When in flood braided rivers carry sediment from the ever rising mountains [geologically speaking] and landslides that frequent such a young country, and at every point where the water flow slows down the carried sediment settles onto the bed of the river, thus in time raising the level of same, and the river, seeking always the path of least resistance, flows off to the side. Thus during high water levels and floods the nature of this predominately gravel environment can change in several hours

The Hunter River that flows into Lake Hawea…
Hunter River

The delightful, endemic and endangered NZ banded dotterel / tuturiwhatu is one of many birds that has evolved to breed in these river beds. Despite exhibiting a variety of seasonal movement patterns ranging from sedentary behaviour, through migration within New Zealand, to trans-Tasman migration, it is hard to not love their comical stop-start actions…
Banded Dotterel

This is typical tuturiwhatu breeding ground – also shared with wrybill and other like minded birds. OK to us humans it is pretty desolate, but keep in mind it lets them see any predators, and when they do they mimic an injury to lure rats, cats and stoats away from off-spring…
Riverbeds 2

Well meaning flower lovers of decades ago decided to brighten up the desolation, and spread the non native lupin seed. They probably never realised the above, and that each seed being coated with a type of oil to preserve it, can survive for several years sprouting only when ideal conditions exist. The perfect seed for such a dynamic bed – they of course then become impossible to get rid of, apart from annual spraying and that is not a cunning or cheap thing to do in waterways annually…
Lupins in The Ahuriri river valley

And then there are wilding pines – these ones have been sprayed. The terrain hosting cushion type vegetation is again the sort chosen for nesting…
Tasman Riverbed

No one denies the lupins look beautiful. And by-the-way after the brief flowering is over they become anything but ethereal, and more of an eyesore…
Lupins in The Ahuriri river valley

Another beautiful frequenter of the braided river environment is the black fronted tern tarapirohe. They spend hours swooping for bugs above and on the glacial silt laden blue/grey water surface, and of course breed nearby…
Tern

The natural state as another dawn breaks on a braided river in The Southern Alps…
Tasman Riverbed dawn light

If only lupins could be confined to roadsides! But even in such a place they invite suicide by flowery eyed tourists, toting cameras that are scant protection against the 110km/hr traffic that rushes by their nearby vehicles, the parking of which is more spontaneous than well thought out…
Lupins again

The two villains together on the shores of Lake Pukaki…
Lupins and a wilding pine - Lake Pukaki

The uniquely billed wrybill / ngutuparore which breeds only in braided rivers of the South Island. It is the only bird in the world with a laterally-curved bill [curved to the right], which it uses to reach insect larvae under rounded riverbed stones. Wrybills are completely dependent on the greywacke shingle of the riverbeds…
Wry bill

Letter: Aquifer concern | Stuff.co.nz

Trevor and Barbara Chinn, friends of mine who live by Lake Hawea, may have become very mindful of water quality by the proximity of many thousands of dairy cattle at nearby Hawea Flat.

New Zealand Dairy Cows
Photo by Southern Light

Trevor’s letter below should be read in the context of his lifetime’s work as an internationally acknowledged glaciologist…

The South Island has been blessed by massive supplies of gravel spread from the Southern Alps down to the coasts to form fertile valleys and plains holding pristine aquifers.

I have been concerned about the effects of the recent explosive spread of dairy irrigation in the catchments feeding these aquifers.Over the gravel plains of Canterbury, Mackenzie Country, Upper Clutha and Southland, with annual rainfalls of around 800mm

Read more at the source: Letter: Aquifer concern | Stuff.co.nz

Cheers

Donald

Aoraki / Mount Cook National Parks – Mountain Huts in Crisis – A Case for the Malte Brun Range

This is an excellent summation by photographer Colin Monteath of hedgehoghouse.com
 of what man-made accelerated climate change is doing to our largest mountains, glaciers and huts around the Aoraki Mt Cook National Park.

Godley hut, Aoraki Mt Cook National Park
Godley hut, Aoraki Mt Cook National Park circa 1972

It came under much discussion at the recent Sustainable Summits 2016 Conference at Aoraki Mt Cook.

Read more at Colin’s FaceBook Post >>

NZ glacial shrinkage ~ a Radio New Zealand interview with glaciologist Trevor Chinn

Trevor and wife Barbara live nearby and it’s been a privilege to re-acquaint recently over a cup of tea, and share here some of Trevor’s knowledge…

Hochstetter Glacier and Icefall - Aoraki Mt Cook and Mt Tasman. Aoraki Mt Cook National Park
Hochstetter Glacier and Icefall – Aoraki Mt Cook and Mt Tasman. Aoraki Mt Cook National Park. Circa 1975

Kathryn Ryan speaks to glaciologist Trevor Chinn on the rapid shrinkage of the country’s glaciers. Over four decades Dr Trevor Chinn has photographed all of the South Islands glaciers, of which there are more than 3,000 as part of a world glacier inventory project.The central Southern Alps has lost a quarter of its ice in recent decades and stands to lose another 50 to 60 percent. The issue has been discussed this week at the Sustainable Summits conference at Mt Cook.

Source and read more>>: NZ glacial shrinkage | Nine To Noon, 9:29 am on 12 August 2016 | Radio New Zealand