PAGES New Zealand

national science highlight

NZ-INTIMATE Project
From NZ-INTIMATE Group. For membership and details of the project see:
Alloway, B.V., Lowe, D.J., Barrell, D.J.A., Newnham, R.M., Almond, P.C., Augustinus, P.C., Bertler, N.A.N., Litchfield, N.I., McGlone, M.S., Shulmeister, J., Vandergoes, M.J., Williams, P.W., 2007. ‘Towards a climate event stratigraphy for New Zealand over the past 30,000 years (NZ-INTIMATE project)’. Journal of Quaternary Science, 22: 9-35.

http://www.paleoclimate.org.nz/index.html
Poster can be downloaded at: http://www.paleoclimate.org.nz/downloads.html

Caption
A poster summarizing a representative selection of evidence for environmental conditions and climate change in New Zealand during the last 30,000 years has been prepared as a “first step” contribution to the INTIMATE (INTegration of Ice-core, Marine And TerrEstrial records) initiative of the INQUA (International Union for Quaternary Research) Paleoclimate Commission. This international initiative aims to establish a more detailed knowledge of the nature, timing and regional to global extent of climatic and environmental changes associated with the Last Termination (the end of the Last Glaciation).

The poster depicts key New Zealand onshore and offshore records for the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and the Last Glacial-Interglacial Transition (LGIT), from a variety of latitudes and elevations. Inset maps show New Zealand’s oceanographic setting, principal currents and water masses, extent of glaciers, and distribution of vegetation zones at approximately 22,000 calendar years ago and at modern times (incorporating the inferred vegetation distribution at c. 1250 AD, before deforestation associated with human settlement). A calendar-age timescale is based on a combination of volcanic ash (tephra) and radiometric dates. Paleoclimate records from ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland are presented for comparison with New Zealand records.