The effect of some environmental factors on rapid mass movement in the Hunua Ranges, New Zealand

This paper describes some of the relationships between rapid mass movement and environmental factors in the Hunua Ranges. Extreme climatic events appear to be important in triggering mass movement, while vegetation has a marked effect on mass movement processes and resulting landforms. The main effects of lithology and soils are connected with their influence on site conditions of mass movement. Drainage basin morphometry is affected by the addition of channels produced by mass movement

Chronology of fans and terraces in the Galatea Basin

Air-borne volcanic ash beds are used to date fans and terraces in the Galatea Basin and to outline the depositional history of this part of the Rangitaiki Valley. The basin is interpreted as a fault-angle depression formed by a downwarped sheet of ignimbrite and an upthrusted block of greywacke which forms the Ikawhenua Range. It is from this range that much of the detritus has been derived to fill the basin, deposited mainly in the form of fans and terraces. The larger fans cover a wide area and their surfaces are older than the Rotoma eruption of c. 8000 years B.P. The widespread occurrence of these fans indicates a major erosion interval between c. 11,000 and c. 8,000 years ago. The younger fans are distributed in a particular order with fans of the Pre-Taupo surface north of the Horomanga Stream and those of the Pre- and Post-Kaharoa surfaces south of the same stream. This ordered distribution of the younger fans suggests a climatic control of fan building. Aggradation and degradation phases in the Rangitaiki and Whirinaki Rivers have formed a pronounced meander trough containing terraces of the Pre-Taupo, Pre-Kaharoa, and Post-Kaharoa surfaces. The terrace of the Pre-Kaharoa surface, largely of Taupo Pumice alluvium, is the most common. Degradation, however, is controlled by a local base level at the ignimbrite rapids on the Rangitaiki River just north of the Galatea Basin

The movement of sediment in a channel in relation to magnitude and frequency concepts- a New Zealand example

In areas where surface wash contributes most of the debris to a channel network, the effect of events of moderate magnitude and frequency appear to be more important than catastrophic events for land form development. In previous studies this idea has been emphasised, largely as a result of the fact that the contribution of bedload to sediment yield has rarely been considered. Examination of these ideas under certain New Zealand conditions would seem to present a somewhat different picture. Where rapid mass movement is the main contributor of sediment to the channel, both the development of hill-slope form and the movement of sediment in channels must be related to the frequency of occurrence of mass movements. The evidence seems to suggest that most major mass movements are triggered during high-intensity, low-frequency storms. The Orere River catchment in the Hunua greywacke block of South Auckland, New Zealand, is examined to test these ideas. Although historical data are limited, the character of the sediments in the lower catchment would suggest a succession of major periods of deposition. High-intensity storms of 1966 and 1967 resulted in the deposition of large amounts of material in the channels throughout the catchment, with a gradual removal of material mainly from the upper catchment since that time. From the limited evidence that is available, a simple model of sediment movement through the catchment is presented

Some Soils and Surficial Deposits in the Kokoda Valley, Papua and New Guinea

ABSTRACT: The upper two of a series of four fan surfaces in the Kokoda Valley, Papua and New Guinea, are covered with volcanic ash. Soils on these two surfaces have fine-grained textures and well-developed structural characteristics. The plasma of these soils is isotropic in thin section. Differences in color and in the kinds of clay minerals present in these two soils are attributed to the drainage conditions of the underlying material. The lower two of the four fan surfaces have soils developed mainly from alluvium. Some soil profiles on the older of these two surfaces are partially derived from reworked volcanic ash. The alluvial soils are coarser grained and shallower than the volcanic ash soils. The plasma of the alluvial soils exhibits increasing birefringence with decreasing amounts of volcanic ash. The soil pattern proved useful in interpreting aspects of the geomorphic history of the study area

Geomorphological evolution of the Navua river, Fiji

The Navua River on the main island of Fiji displays anomalous drainage features and associated fluvial forms. The River course makes a right-angled bend approximately halfway along its course, beyond which it flows through a narrow gorge cut into hard volcanic rocks. Several tributaries enter the gorge as high cascades from hanging valleys. It is proposed that the former course of the palaeo-Navua River flowed east in a straight line along the modern Waidina River, and eventually discharged into Fiji's Rewa River system. Evidence for this is the presence of a spectacular dry gorge (a wind gap) at the head of the Waidina River. Previous ideas of river capture fail to explain the evolution of the local fluvial geomorphology. Instead, tectonic uplift probably dammed the palaeo-Navua and diverted it to its present short course to the sea. This new hypothesis provides a more plausible, simultaneous account for all the major fluvial geomorphic features, their geographical distribution and their relationship with geology in the Navua region

Fluvial Depositional Systems of the African Humid Period : An Analog for an Early, Wet Mars in the Eastern Sahara

A widely hypothesized but complex transition from widespread fluvial activity to predominantly aeolian processes is inferred on Mars based on remote sensing data observations of ancient landforms. However, the lack of analysis of in situ martian fluvial deposits hinders our understanding of the flow regime nature and sustainability of the martian fluvial activity and the hunt for ancient life. Studying analogs from arid zones on Earth is fundamental to quantitatively understanding geomorphic processes and climate drivers that might have dominated during early Mars. Here we investigate the formation and preservation of fluvial depositional systems in the eastern Sahara, where the largest arid region on Earth hosts important repositories of past climatic changes. The fluvial systems are composed of well-preserved single-thread sinuous to branching ridges and fan-shaped deposits interpreted as deltas. The systems' configuration and sedimentary content suggest that ephemeral rivers carved these landforms by sequential intermittent episodes of erosion and deposition active for 10-100s years over ∼10,000 years during the late Quaternary. Subsequently, these landforms were sculpted by a marginal role of rainfall and aeolian processes with minimum erosion rates of 1.1 ± 0.2 mm/yr, supplying ∼96 ± 24 × 10 m of disaggregated sediment to adjacent aeolian dunes. Our results imply that similar martian fluvial systems preserving single-thread, short distance source-to-sink courses may have formed due to transient drainage networks active over short durations. Altogether, this study adds to the growing recognition of the complexity of interpreting climate history from orbital images of landforms