Date: |
15 Apr 2026, 4.30PM – 6.30PM |
duration: |
2 hrs |
Venue: |
Tonkin & Taylor Limited - Wellington |
Address: |
level 3/161 Victoria Street Wellington |
Cost: |
Free event |
The 7.8 Mw Kaikōura earthquake in 2006 lead to the demolition of 20 buildings in Wellington, with insurance claims totalling over 2 billion New Zealand Dollars. The engineering of seismically resilient buildings constructed thereafter require extensive ground investigations to build a more complete picture of the subsurface conditions. The retrieval of deep sediment cores used for geotechnical assessments from Wellington also offer incredibly valuable insights into prehistoric landscapes and major past environmental shifts.
Sediments up to 100 m + deep, retrieved from the Wellington Basin and the Hutt Valley, show distinct changes ranging from gravel, sand, silt, shell rich mud, peat, and contain tephra. Geochemical fingerprinting of these tephra, coupled with radiocarbon dating, has provided further insights into the timing of sedimentation, vegetation and sea level histories on the landscape over the Late Pleistocene in this region. The vegetation response to the 345 ka Whakamaru Super Eruption, containing a 50 cm thick ash deposit 300 km from its source, is explored at millimeter scale resolution.
Refreshments from 4.30pm, presentation from 5pm.
Refreshments kindly sponsored by Griffiths.
Join the New Zealand Geotechnical Society's Wellington branch for an in-person presentation by Matthew Ryan on Wednesday 15 April 2026.
The 7.8 Mw Kaikōura earthquake in 2006 lead to the demolition of 20 buildings in Wellington, with insurance claims totalling over 2 billion New Zealand Dollars. The engineering of seismically resilient buildings constructed thereafter require extensive ground investigations to build a more complete picture of the subsurface conditions. The retrieval of deep sediment cores used for geotechnical assessments from Wellington also offer incredibly valuable insights into prehistoric landscapes and major past environmental shifts.
Sediments up to 100 m + deep, retrieved from the Wellington Basin and the Hutt Valley, show distinct changes ranging from gravel, sand, silt, shell rich mud, peat, and contain tephra. Geochemical fingerprinting of these tephra, coupled with radiocarbon dating, has provided further insights into the timing of sedimentation, vegetation and sea level histories on the landscape over the Late Pleistocene in this region. The vegetation response to the 345 ka Whakamaru Super Eruption, containing a 50 cm thick ash deposit 300 km from its source, is explored at millimeter scale resolution.
Refreshments from 4.30pm, presentation from 5pm.
Refreshments kindly sponsored by Griffiths.
