Awesome Forces : The Natural Hazards that Threaten New Zealand

by Geoff Hicks (Editor), Hamish Campbell (Editor)

New Zealand is a long, thin country, situated on the boundary between two of the Earth’s gigantic crustal plates. The central ridge of mountain ranges, stretching from Fiordland to East Cape like a knobbly backbone, has been pushed up by huge earth processes as one plate collides and grinds against the other. Add to this the interaction of steep slopes and a climate that dumps a lot of water on them and you have a formula for collapse – landslide! The huge faults that run like railway tracks through the central part of the country are also created by the confrontation of the plates, as the Pacific Plate tries to squeeze under the Australian Plate. The result? About 17,000 earthquakes each year! The lofty volcanic cones of the central North Island are minor copared with mighty Taupo, one of the most explosive and active volcanoes in the world. Even our position in the Southwest Pacific, surrounded by deep ocean, makes us vulnerable to tsunami – and some pretty vigorous weather! All New Zealanders will encounter at least one of these hazards in their lives, just by virtue of living here. Awesome Forces is a book that everyone needs to read, in order to understand the hazards that threaten this beautiful, unstable land – and learn what they can do to survive them. It has been written by some of New Zeland’s leading Hamish Campbell on New Zealand’s setting, Alan Hull on earthquakes, Bruce Houghton and David Johnston on volcanoes, Mauri and Eileen McSaveney on landslides, Willem de Lange on tsunami, and Jim Salinger on adverse weather.

Genres: Nonfiction

159 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1999

Reviews

[Amelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastically thorough reference book about NZ Geography, Geology, Volcanology, weather and other risks of natural disasters.
Glad to have it on my bookshelf, and will absolutely upgrade it to a new edition if another one comes out.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A random that I picked up at the library for fun. It covers volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, tsunami and weather. It's a bit out of date (1998) so it doesn't have the Christchurch earthquake and a few other more recent events. We most enjoyed reading about some of the large landslides around New Zealand. My husband has worked on dams near some of the landslides and done studies on some of the others, so he was able to look at the photos in the book and give more in depth information about the event. It was interesting to learn more about the geology and climate of New Zealand.