From the week beginning 15 February, 2021, we have been taking part in a joint project investigating the newly discovered Te Puninga Fault near Morrinsville. This fault is the closest to the Hamilton Basin and so we are trying to work out if activity on the Te Puninga Fault may have impacted on Hamilton Basin, where we suggest the liquefaction of lacustrine tephra layers (tephra seismites) has been caused largely by activity on one or more of the local Hamilton Basin faults. By studying the Te Puninga Fault we plan to test this idea.
The work on the Te Puninga Fault is jointly funded by an EQC project entitled “Paleoseismology of the newly discovered Te Puninga Fault, Hauraki Plains”, and our Marsden Fund project associated with paleoseismicity of the Hamilton lowlands.
Directed by palaeoseismologist Dr Pilar Villamor (GNS Science), three large trenches were opened on two different strands of the fault scarp that runs essentially north-south (roughly parallel to SH 27) a few kilometres to the northeast of Morrinsville. Others involved in the trenching work included Drs Kelvin Berryman and Kate Clark (GNS Science) along with Waikato-based geoscientists David Lowe, Vicki Moon, Alan Hogg, and Joshua Hughes. Joshua has joined the tephra seismites team to work on the Te Puninga Fault as part of his University of Waikato graduate studies (2021-22).
The fault and trenching made national news coverage including the entire front page of the Waikato Times (19 Feb 2021) and TV news items including Joshua speaking on One News. See the following links for more: Stuff news;
this video, and this article in Newshub.
Tephra Seismites 
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