Albert Park (volcano)

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The Albert Park Volcano is one of the volcanoes of the Auckland Volcanic Field in Auckland on the North Island of New Zealand . It is located in the Queen Street area of downtown Auckland.

Due to the removal of the rock and leveling of the landscape for building purposes, only a few above-ground signs of the volcano remain.

The Austrian geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter examined the area in 1859 and describes Albert Park as the southeastern part of a "tuff cone or sunken cinder cone". In his day slag, lava blocks and weathered volcanic ash covered the area. From their distribution pattern, he concluded that they belonged to a former explosion crater with a surrounding tuff ring, through which the Queen Street Stream had dug a valley. It stretched from Albert Park across the Queen Street Valley and from Victoria Street to Shortland Street. He also reports mining of the slag on the north slope of Albert Park. Even then, the exact geomorphology of the volcano was unclear.

During the Second World War, air raid tunnels were dug under Albert Park, and almost only sandstone was found. On the nearby university site, drillings and several excavation pits for large buildings hit Waitemata sandstone after six to eight meters of tuff. The stump of a human-cut tree was found on Kitchener Street, near the Auckland Art Gallery , which grew on sandstone and was covered by 8 m of volcanic ash. This provided evidence that the area was already populated at the time of the outbreak. Godall also settled the volcano north of Victoria Street near the intersection of High Street and Chancery Lane.

Boreholes and excavations in the square of the old district court and the multi-storey car park on Victoria Street exposed a layer of 30 m of lapilli above the sandstone subsoil. Since these cinder deposits deposit closer to the volcano than the lighter volcanic ashes, the volcano must have been nearby.

It is now believed that - like other volcanoes in the Auckland field - it was a low cinder cone and was located near the old district court, northwest of Albert Park. So it was not directly on the site of the Albert Park that gave it its name. On its northern slope, however, reddish slag deposits can still be found, which cover the sandstone slope that already existed here. A short stream of basaltic lava was also found from the base of the park into the Queen Street Valley.

It is therefore believed today that the volcano erupted in a depression between the sandstone ridges of Albert Park and Highland Street near the old district court. After an explosive eruption, which deposited up to 8 m of ash and buried the existing forest under itself, further eruptions followed, which created a small cinder cone from which a small basaltic lava flow emanated.

See also

literature

  • EJ Searle: City of Volcanoes. A geology of Auckland. Pauls Book Arcade, Auckland 1964 (English).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Bruce W. Hayward: Albert Park Volcano and the Auckland Art Gallery . Geomarine Research, Auckland December 2005 (English, online [accessed April 19, 2016] Unpublished report BWH98 / 05).
  2. ^ F. Von Hochstetter: Geology of New Zealand . Government Printer, Wellington 1959 (English).
  3. ↑ a b EJ Searle: The volcanoes of Auckland city . In: New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics . tape 5 . Wellington 1962, p. 193-227 (English).
  4. ↑ a b J. Godall: On the discovery of a cut stump of a tree, giving evidence of the existence of man in New Zealand at or before the volcanic era. In: Transactions of the NZ Institutes . tape 7 . Wellington 1875, p. 144-146 (English).