Links - Geoscience Society of New Zealand

The result of all this since 1980 has been what some claim to be NZ’s largest geo-science
department. The heyday in student numbers around 1993 saw 300 students enrolled, with a
large graduate school studying mostly for MSc, there being no BSc(Hons) course. Numbers
have since thinned to around 170 in part because NZ now has 33 tertiary education bodies.
The School has seen 534 graduate theses since the first in 1971. Many students now occupy
senior positions in a wide range of industries, including regional resource councils as well as
in NZ-based engineering companies. The school also has a world class commercially driven
radiocarbon dating laboratory run by Dr Allan Hogg, and a fission track laboratory where
study of the thermal history of rocks helps unravel the tectonic story of uplift and sinking in
New Zealand and farther afield. A new laser ablation ICP-MS laboratory is on the way, along
with XRF, XRD, SEM and stable isotope labs.
Campbell Cam Nelson a world-known carbonate petrologist was the foundation geologist at
the department, joining McCraw, Gibbs and Selby in 1970 and becoming Chairperson from
1998 to 1997. Cam was the first to draw attention to the idea that carbonate rock formed not
only in tropical places. He has shown that they can form at all latitudes even Antarctica. This
is important economically because limestones yield some of the world’s major petroleum
traps, a topic being studied by today Waikato by Dr. Steven Wood researching the fracture
cleaved Tikorangi reservoir.
Peter Kamp another well-known sedimentary basin analyst
has held a FRST grant for the past ten years supported by
end-user petroleum company funds. He has been studying
the Taranaki, and more recently the Wanganui and Hawkes
Bay, basins, helping unravel their energy mineral
prospectivity for oil, gas and coal. His and his students’
Energy Research Group data is published in Crown
Minerals Petroleum Reports.
International recognition has also been achieved by the
coastal marine studies group consisting of Professor Terry
Healy, Drs Willem de Lange and Karin Bryan where
Terry’s focus is on ports and basins, Karin’s on beach
processes and Willem is known for his coastal hazards
expertise, including tsunami.
Dr. David Campbell, Chair
Engineering Studies are today successfully led by Vicki Associate Prof Roger Briggs
Moon who has 15 post graduate students. Her research
interests include volcanic, pyroclastic and altered materials particularly their weathering and
mass wasting. She also studies erosion from development sites.
Volcanic studies are undertaken by Roger Briggs a petrologist who examines the local basaltic
volcanoes as well as those of Taupo (TVZ) and Coromadel (CVR). The first provides plenty
of Recent surface phenomena while the latter because of erosion provides deeper access to
Tertiary feeder plumbing and alteration-gold-mineralization systems. One of Roger’s projects
is the mapping at 50,000 scale of the coastal Bay of Plenty; work financed by the regional
GSNZ Newsletter 143 (2007) Page 15