PAGES New Zealand

University of Waikato

Contact: Associate Professor David J. Lowe (d.lowe@waikato.ac.nz).

Quaternary science at Waikato University is undertaken largely within the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences in the School of Science and Engineering. Quaternary-related research at Waikato is also undertaken by the Waikato Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory, and by the International Global Change Institute which is essentially a climate-change group comprising geographers and social scientists that examine human-related aspects of change. A major advantage for Waikato scientists is the availability on campus of various dating techniques including radiocarbon (radiometric and AMS), fission track and a recently constructed (U-Th)/He system. http://earth.waikato.ac.nz/climatic_environmental_change/

Currently around six Quaternary research projects, all involving research students and various collaborators, are underway at Waikato University:

1. Quaternary and older cyclothemic successions in Wanganui Basin and Hawke’s Bay (key scientists involved include Peter Kamp, Cam Nelson, Adam Vonk, Kyle Bland, Arne Pallentin)
2. High-resolution marine record for the Lateglacial transition in New Zealand (Penny Cook, Chris Hendy, Wally Broecker)
3. Glacial record for South Island using stratigraphy, palynology, tephrochronology, and 14C, OSL and exposure-age dating (Chris Hendy, George Denton, Rewi Newnham, Marcus Vandergoes, David Lowe)
4. Patterns of climate change since MOIS 5e in North Island via lakes and bogs using palynology, testate amoebae and tephrochonology (Rewi Newnham, Zoe Hazell, Dan Charman, David Lowe)
5. Radiocarbon calibration and palaeoclimate during Oxygen Isotope Stage 3 (Alan Hogg, Jonathan palmer, John Ogden, David Lowe)
6. Chronology of Polynesian settlement in New Zealand (Alan Hogg, David Lowe, Tom Higham)

Click here to see Waikato staff involved in Quaternary research.

Waikato Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory
The Waikato Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory (housed within the School of Science and Technology as a stand-alone unit) is one of the foremost radiocarbon laboratories in the world. It provides Quantulus liquid scintillation spectrometry and accesses AMS facilities with its purpose-built graphite line. It has a strong research record including provision of one of the international radiocarbon standards, the design and manufacture of an international scintillation counting vial, the generation of a Southern Hemisphere calibration curve for the last 1000 years in a joint project with Queen’s University of Belfast, improving the accuracy of ‘old’ radiocarbon dates by developing new background standards and protocols, and high-precision dating faciltities for applications world-wide including for geoscientific research and archaeology including developing new protocols for dating bone and marine shell. In September 2003 the lab’s director Dr Alan Hogg and colleagues Jonathan Palmer, John Ogden and David Lowe were awarded a Marsden Fund award for a project entitled “Radiocarbon calibration and palaeoclimate during Oxygen Isotope Stage 3: testing hypotheses of abrupt climate change using New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis).”

To visit the laboratory’s award-winning home page, click here.