Tibet is the rooftop of the world; the highest plateau on earth and an extreme high altitude environment where people have lived for five thousand years. Tibet is a place of ancient wonder and devoted spirituality but here an emerging modernity is now being woven into the tapestry of the region. These mystical people who live so close to heaven are beginning to open up and share their secrets.
Over thousands of years, the natural barriers in China’s remote south-western frontier have created isolated pockets of culture, incubating some of the world’s most extraordinary ways of life. 25 distinct ethnicities live in the province of Yunnan – from the buffalo-worshipping Wa to the water-splashing Dai. As modern development sweeps through the land, ancient secrets are shared with the world.
In the cold, steep world of the fiords, tannins block out sunlight to the world below. The fiords are cold and inhospitable in winter, when they receive little light and freeze over at their extremes. In this unforgiving world there are no second chances
In the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand’s most active volcano fills the sky with plumes of white cloud. Sterile and inhospitable, the forces that built White Island influence the seas around it.
Alone in the Pacific, halfway to Tonga, sit the Kermadec Islands. This remote archipelago is New Zealand’s northernmost frontier and our toehold on the tropics. Everything that lives on and around these young islands has travelled far to be here and a unique mix of creatures thrive in its warm waters. As a marine community the Kermadec is unrivalled in New Zealand waters.
Once at the crossroads of East and West on the ancient Silk Road, the vast expanse of Xinjiang is set to take a pivotal role again as China builds 21st century trade routes to take its goods to the world. In this culturally rich and climatically harsh region, the potential for growth appears as endless as the landscape. Xinjiang’s people may be ethnically diverse but they all share the steely determination required to survive and succeed in one of the most extreme environments on the planet.
From the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea Mexico is one of the most ecologically rich places anywhere. It draws wild travellers from afar to hunt, breed, rest and survive. At this crossroads life is never easy but there are jewels to be found. The cool blue waters in the west harbour giants, while smaller animals crisscross the nearby desert. In the jungles to the east an unseen multitude celebrate life while the moon shines.
Just after midnight on November 14, 2016, more than 24 fault lines around Kaikōura ruptured in spectacular fashion. One of these rifts—the previously unmapped Papatea Fault—threw up a few extra surprises for scientists. Normally, the rupture of a fault is caused by a build-up of stress. But Papatea was stress-free until its rupturing neighbours squeezed it, triggering a violent fracture. In a matter of seconds, the earth split open along 19 kilometres and sections of mountainous land were shifted upwards by eight metres. Of the 24 fault lines, Papatea produced the largest vertical movement. At first, Papatea’s behaviour confused scientists, because the fault wasn’t under strain. In a study published in Science Advances in October, New Zealand and Canadian researchers used before-and-after images of the fault line to create a model and figure out what happened. It’s another unusual aspect of the most complex earthquake ever studied, with implications for assessing seismic risk. Current earthquake forecasting is based on the strain model, where faults accumulate tension until they fail, but Papatea shows that displacement is also a risk, says Mark Stirling, chair of earthquake science at the University of Otago: “A ten-metre displacement in a built-up area or beneath a critical facility, such as a large dam, would have significant consequences.”
Artificial intelligence can spot diseases with about the same accuracy as human professionals, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis published in The Lancet Digital Health in September. Across 14 studies, ‘deep learning’ algorithms correctly detected conditions ranging from cancers to eye diseases in 87 per cent of cases, compared to 86 per cent by doctors. Artificial intelligence was also marginally better at identifying patients who had a clean bill of health.
Our next-door neighbour is a cannibal. Andromeda, the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, has a history of eating smaller galaxies, and we’re next on the menu—in about four billion years. Research published in Nature in October documents the leftovers of galactic meals: dense star clusters called globular clusters dotted throughout the stellar halo orbiting Andromeda. By tracing the faint remains of smaller galaxies embedded in the globular clusters on Andromeda’s outskirts, researchers reconstructed how and when the smaller star systems were gobbled up. “We are cosmic archaeologists, except we are digging through the fossils of long-dead galaxies rather than human history,” said the study’s co-author, Geraint Lewis from the University of Sydney. Andromeda is on a collision course with the Milky Way—so now we have a clearer picture of the ultimate fate of our galaxy.
Residents and emergency services could better handle earthquakes if they knew whether the worst was over, or if it were still to come. Large earthquakes are often followed by aftershocks that are difficult to predict, and can sometimes be bigger than the first. Now, Swiss researchers have devised a system to help determine whether a magnitude 6.0 or greater earthquake is the main event, or merely a precursor. Laura Gulia and Stefan Wiemer of the Swiss university ETH Zurich analysed the sequences of earthquakes in the Amatrice–Norcia region in Italy and the Kumamoto region in Japan in 2016, devising a model for predicting the threat of a larger earthquake to follow. Tested against 58 known earthquake sequences, the model identified foreshocks and aftershocks with 95 per cent accuracy.
Plotting sea-level fluctuations around Zealandia three million years ago has sounded a warning for the future. Using new techniques to analyse the size of particles pushed around by wave action during the Pliocene, researchers led by Georgia Grant of GNS Science have found that, at a time when carbon-dioxide concentrations were similar to today’s, and temperatures around 2ºC warmer, a third of Antarctica’s ice sheets melted, causing sea levels to rise up to 25 metres higher than at present. The scientists warn that we might expect sea-level rise of up to 20 metres should warming hit a 2ºC tipping point.
Something out of the ordinary has been unfolding above the South Pole.
Adventures of an amateur fossil hunter.
This issue’s feature on fishing was 12 months in the making.
Are there plenty more fish in the sea? Reports of falling hoki stocks off the West Coast and the near-disappearance of crayfish from the Hauraki Gulf suggest that our ‘best in the world’ fisheries management may not be living up to the hype. Three decades ago, the right to catch and sell fish became a property right, one that has now accumulated in the hands of a few. How has that worked out for people—and for fish?
As the sun sets on New Zealand’s manufacturing industries, a photographer visits a foundry and steel mill that represent the last of their kind.
New Zealand’s forests were cleared at a record pace, and from this destruction, a sport arose: who can fell a tree the fastest? Competitive woodchopping transformed the labour of forestry into a community event. Now, 150 years on, a diminishing number of axemen and axewomen chop for top honours at A&P shows around the country.
Albatrosses and sea lions, little blue penguins and takahē live next door to humans in Dunedin, a city perched on a knot of land on the Otago coastline.
Scouring Taupō’s silty bottom in search of spearfishers.
Loading..
Thanks, you're good to go!
Thanks, you're good to go!
Ask your librarian to subscribe to this service next year. Alternatively, use a home network and buy a digital subscription—just $1/week...
Subscribe to our free newsletter for news and prizes
3
Unlimited access to every NZGeo story ever written and hundreds of hours of natural history documentaries on all your devices.
Already a subscriber? Sign in
