4,383 research outputs found
Guidebook for Pre-conference North Island Field Trip A1 ‘Ashes to Issues’, 28-30 November, 2008
No full textWelcome to New Zealand or Aotearoa – „Land of the long lingering day [twilight]‟ – and to our three-day pre-conference North Island field trip „Ashes and Issues‟. We trust your stay in New Zealand is both informative and friendly and there is something for everyone on the trip. The itinerary in brief and a map of the North Island showing the main scientific stops are shown above. At the time of guidebook preparation, we have a group of 23, including four students, on the tour with participants from Japan, Taiwan, USA, UK, Australia and New Zealand. The tour leaders are Prof David Lowe (Univ. of Waikato, Hamilton) and Dr Haydon Jones (Scion Research, Rotorua). Assistant leader is Prof Paul McDaniel (Univ. of Idaho, Moscow), on leave at the Univ. of Waikato July-December, 2008. We offer a warm welcome to you all. Because we have considerable distances to travel (especially Day 3), as well as a range of stops planned, we will need to leave the hotel at 8.00 am each day
Spatial variations of sea-level rise and impacts: an application of DIVA
No full textDue to complexities of creating sea-level rise scenarios, impacts of climate-induced sea-level rise are often produced from a limited number of models assuming a global uniform rise in sea level. A greater number of models, including those with a pattern reflecting regional variations would help to assure reliability and a range of projections, indicating where models agree and disagree. This paper determines how nine new patterned-scaled sea-level rise scenarios (plus the uniform and patterned ensemble mean rises) influence global and regional coastal impacts (wetland loss, dry land loss due to erosion and the expected number of people flooded per year by extreme sea levels). The DIVA coastal impacts model was used under an A1B scenario, and assumed defences were not upgraded as conditions evolve. For seven out of nine climate models, impacts occurred at a proportional rate to global sea-level rise. For the remaining two models, higher than average rise in sea level was projected in northern latitudes or around populated coasts thus skewing global impact projections compared with the ensemble global mean. Regional variability in impacts were compared using the ensemble mean uniform and patterned scenarios: The largest relative difference in impacts occurred around the Mediterranean coast, and the largest absolute differences around low-lying populated coasts, such as south, south-east and east Asia. Uniform projections of sea-level rise impacts remain a useful method to determine global impacts, but improved regional scale models of sea-level rise, particularly around semi-enclosed seas and densely populated low-lying coasts will provide improved regional impact projections and a characterisation of their uncertainties
R.J. Sommers
No full textThe single-spaced paragraph on the “About the Author” page of R.J. Sommers’ latest novel says she lives in a one-story house on the edge of a city. It says she is renowned for writing relatable characters and compelling relationships. It says nothing about her own friends.
Gazing from a photo at the top of the page, R.J. Sommers appears to point a camera toward her readers..
Defining absolute environmental limits for the built environment
No full textThe question addressed is whether it is possible to define working limits on environmental impacts from the built environment in terms of global carrying capacity. The main focus is on energy-related impacts, since these are global and relatively well-understood. Four possible approaches to defining limits are explored: static equilibrium, asymptotic, integral of excess and planned future. The conclusions that emerge from this exploration are that global environmental constraints are very tight, but also that they are dynamically and strongly influenced by the trajectory of social and technological development over the coming century. Their use as the basis for practical, quantitative metrics of sustainability, therefore, involves a large measure of subjectivity. A fifth approach - the developmental approach - is identified, which instead of focusing on long-term external constraints to human activity, focuses instead on the internal, short- to medium-term dynamics of the built environment itself. It appears likely that the developmental approach, guided by qualitative conclusions from the analysis of global carrying capacity, is likely to be most fruitful
Role of tephra in dating Polynesian settlement and impact, New Zealand
No full textTephrochronology in its original sense is the use of tephra layers as time-stratigraphic marker beds to establish numerical or relative ages (Lowe and Hunt, 2001). Tephra layers have been described and studied in New Zealand for more than 160 years (the German naturalist and surgeon Ernst Dieffenbach described ‘recognizable’ tephra sections in his 1843 book Travels in New Zealand), and the first isopach map, showing fallout from the deadly plinian basaltic eruption of Mt Tarawera on 10 June 1886, was published in 1888 (Lowe, 1990; Lowe et al., 2002). More recently, a wide range of tephra-related paleoenvironmental research has been undertaken (e.g., Lowe and Newnham, 1999; Newnham and Lowe, 1999; Newnham et al., 1999, 2004; Shane, 2000), including new advances in the role of tephra in linking and dating sites containing evidence for abrupt climatic change (e.g., Newnham and Lowe, 2000; Newnham et al., 2003). Here we focus on the use of tephrochronology in dating the arrival and impacts of the first humans in New Zealand, a difficult problem for which this technique has proven to be of critical importance
Sea-level rise and impacts projections under a future scenario with large greenhouse gas emission reductions
No full textUsing projections from two coupled climate models (HadCM3C and HadGEM2-AO), we consider the effect on 21st century sea-level rise (SLR) of mitigation policies relative to a scenario of business-as-usual (BAU). Around a third of the global-mean SLR over the century is avoided by a mitigation scenario under which global-mean near surface air temperature stabilises close to the Copenhagen Accord limit of a 2°C increase. Under BAU (a variant of the A1B scenario) the model-averaged projected SLR for 2090–2099 relative to 1980–1999 is 0.29 m–0.51 m (5%–95% uncertainties from treatment of land-based ice melt); under mitigation (E1 scenario) it is 0.17 m–0.34 m. This reduction is primarily from reduced thermal expansion. The spatial patterns of regional SLR are fairly dissimilar between the models, but are qualitatively similar across scenarios for a particular model. An impacts model suggests that by the end of the 21st century and without upgrade in defences around 55% of the 84 million additional people flooded per year globally under BAU (from SLR alone) could be avoided under such mitigation. The above projections of SLR follow the methodology of the IPCC Fourth Assessment. We have, however, also conducted a sensitivity study of SLR and its impacts where the possibility of accelerated ice sheet dynamics is accounted fo
Introduction to the landscapes and soils of the Hamilton Basin
No full textThe Hamilton Basin area is characterised by four main landscape units or landforms as depicted in the block diagrams below (McCraw, 1967, 2002; Bruce, 1979; Selby and Lowe, 1992), and these provide a soil-landscape model to predict the soil pattern
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