B1.2.1 New Zealand Landscape: General
Description
This article is from the New Zealand FAQ, by Phil Stuart-Jones and Lin Nah with numerous contributions by others.
B1.2.1 New Zealand Landscape: General
NZ is a long narrow country lying roughly North/South with mountain ranges
running much of its length. It is predominately mountainous with some
large coastal plains and is a little larger than Britain, slightly smaller
than Italy, and almost exactly the size of Colorado.
The only 'geographical feature' New Zealand doesn't have is live coral
reef. We have all the rest: rainforest, desert, fiords, flooded valleys,
gorges, plains, mountains, glaciers, volcanoes, geothermics, swamps, lakes,
braided rivers, peneplains, badlands, and our very own continental plate
junction... As a result of the latter, earthquakes are common, though
usually not severe (patience... :-)
For more information, go to sci.geo.geology, and download the earthquake
maps for this week. The little black line snaking through New Zealand is
the plate boundary. A good URL for this is:
http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/QUAKES/WEEKREPS/LATEST/world.gif
Also try
http://www.gphs.vuw.ac.nz/geophysics/geophysics.html
http://www.civeng.carleton.ca/cgi-bin/quakes
and
http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/quakexe/quakes
which lists the strong earthquakes worldwide during the last few days.
You can get almost instant info about larger quakes from the US Geological
Survey at:
http://www.usgs.gov/research/environment/hazards/earthquake/
Or try
gopher://gldfs.cr.usgs.gov:79/0quake
for a simple record of any quake. [not at all sure how this works. help?]
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