The earthquake re-pair work has started on the Knox Church on Bealey Avenue, August 14, 2013 Christchurch New Zealand. While building after building is torn down in Christchurch, plans are in place to ensure as much of a 131-year-old church is retained as possible. Knox Church on Bealey Avenue suffered major damage in the February 22 earthquak...
A video of journalist Charlie Gates introducing the 2014 World Buskers Festival. Gates visits former festival venues in the Christchurch central city and the new performance venues for the 2014 festival, to show how the city has changed since the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes.
Another salvaged house from the Bexley (Pacific Park) red zone is on the truck and may start it's journey to a new location overnight.
'Rekindle' is an initiative started since the earthquakes in Canterbury which provides purposeful work for young people by giving them the opportunity to design and fashion furniture from waste wood. Spectrum's Deborah Nation explores 'Rekindle'.
Male mammals don't stay monogamous to produce fitter offspring, instead they do it for love and to protect their partner; Edward Snowden granted temporary asylum in Russia; Parking companies in central Wellington increase fees after earthquakes; and tours of Christchurch's Red Zone started this week.
A video about the Christchurch Pops Choir which is performing at the Christchurch Arts Festival. The video includes interviews with artistic director Luke Di Somma and president Lee Harris. Di Somma and Harris talk about starting the choir after the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes, and singing pop music. The video also includes footage of the choir singing as part of a flash mob at the Christchurch International Airport.
Maddie Leach and Jem Noble, collaborators on I was using six watts when you Received me... The broadcast of sounds that are special to the city but were lost after the earthquakes are part of the SCAPE Public Art Biennial which starts in Christchurch this Friday.
Back in 2011, a slightly rusty three speed bike abandoned after the September earthquake on a demolition site in Christchurch caught the attention of John Smithies. He's 72, only slightly older than the bike, and he decided it would be just the bicycle to take on a epic, 2000 kilometre journey from Cape Reinga to Bluff. He started in September and expects to reach Bluff on Friday. He's making the epic journey in memory of his wife, Alison who died two years ago of a form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The ride down State Highway One is raising money for leukemia and blood cancer.
A video of Lianne Dalziel speaking to a public gathering about her reasons for standing for the mayoralty of Christchurch. Dalziel talks about starting her mayoralty where Share an Idea left off, making the Council a high performing team, and getting the community involved in the decisions about the future of the city. The video also includes footage of Dalziel taking a tour of the Christchurch central city. Dalziel visits the ChristChurch Cathedral, pointing out a sign which reads, "The earthquakes stopped us, but inept procedures are killing us". She also visits the new Westende Jewellers building, which she notes was the first rebuild in the Christchurch central city but will come down as part of CERA's Transport Plan. Dalziel is shown socialising with members of the public and watching the Christchurch Wizard bless New Regent Street.
Post the earthquakes land has sunk and in this case the track is below high tide level. It would have been at least 500mm above the highest tide level prior to the recent earthquakes that started on 04/09/10.
GRANT ROBERTSON to the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment: Does he stand by his statement that the Household Labour Force Survey is "the standard internationally recognised measure of employment and unemployment"? PAUL GOLDSMITH to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he received on the economy? Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM to the Minister for Climate Change Issues: Does he stand by the answer given by the Minister of Finance to the question "Does he accept that human-induced climate change is real?" that "It may well be…"? Hon DAVID PARKER to the Minister of Finance: Given that unemployment is rising, exports are down, and house price inflation in Auckland and Canterbury is in double-digits, does he agree that after 5 years as Finance Minister he has failed to rebalance and diversify the economy; if not, why not? JOHN HAYES to the Minister of Trade: What efforts is the Government making to deal with the market effects of the possible contamination of some Fonterra diary exports? Hon SHANE JONES to the Minister for Economic Development: What action has he taken to ensure high value jobs are retained in Otago, Waikato, Northland, East Coast and Manawatu? KEVIN HAGUE to the Minister of Health: Exactly how many of the 21 recommendations to the Minister in the 2010 Public Health Advisory Committee Report The Best Start in Life: Achieving effective action on child health and wellbeing has he implemented? JACQUI DEAN to the Minister for Food Safety: What update can she provide the public on the safety of infant formula? Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR to the Minister for Primary Industries: Does he stand by all his statements? NICKY WAGNER to the Minister for Building and Construction: What reports has he received following the Government's announcement of a new earthquake-prone building policy? RICHARD PROSSER to the Minister for Primary Industries: What reports, if any, has he received regarding the regeneration of fish stocks in the Snapper 1 fishery? Dr DAVID CLARK to the Minister for Economic Development: Does he agree with Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull that "Central government needs to understand we can't have a … two-speed economy where Christchurch and Auckland are ripping ahead and the rest of the regions are withering"; if not, why not?
Environmental stress and disturbance can affect the structure and functioning of marine ecosystems by altering their physical, chemical and biological features. In estuaries, benthic invertebrate communities play important roles in structuring sediments, influencing primary production and biogeochemical flux, and occupying key food web positions. Stress and disturbance can reduce species diversity, richness and abundance, with ecological theory predicting that biodiversity will be at its lowest soon after a disturbance with assemblages dominated by opportunistic species. The Avon-Heathcote Estuary in Christchurch New Zealand has provided a novel opportunity to examine the effects of stress, in the form of eutrophication, and disturbance, in the form of cataclysmic earthquake events, on the structure and functioning of an estuarine ecosystem. For more than 50 years, large quantities (up to 500,000m3/day) of treated wastewater were released into this estuary but in March 2010 this was diverted to an ocean outfall, thereby reducing the nutrient loading by around 90% to the estuary. This study was therefore initially focussed on the reversal of eutrophication and consequent effects on food web structure in the estuary as it responded to lower nutrients. In 2011, however, Christchurch was struck with a series of large earthquakes that greatly changed the estuary. Massive amounts of liquefied sediments, covering up to 65% of the estuary floor, were forced up from deep below the estuary, the estuary was tilted by up to a 50cm rise on one side and a corresponding drop on the other, and large quantities of raw sewage from broken wastewater infrastructure entered the estuary for up to nine months. This study was therefore a test of the potentially synergistic effects of nutrient reduction and earthquake disturbance on invertebrate communities, associated habitats and food web dynamics. Because there was considerable site-to-site heterogeneity in the estuary, the sites in this study were selected to represent a eutrophication gradient from relatively “clean” (where the influence of tidal flows was high) to highly impacted (near the historical discharge site). The study was structured around these sites, with components before the wastewater diversion, after the diversion but before the earthquakes, and after the earthquakes. The eutrophication gradient was reflected in the composition and isotopic chemistry of primary producer and invertebrate communities and the characteristics of sediments across the sample sites. Sites closest to the former wastewater discharge pipe were the most eutrophic and had cohesive organic -rich, fine sediments and relatively depauperate communities dominated by the opportunistic taxa Capitellidae. The less-impacted sites had coarser, sandier sediments with fewer pollutants and far less organic matter than at the eutrophic sites, relatively high diversity and lower abundances of micro- and macro-algae. Sewage-derived nitrogen had became incorporated into the estuarine food web at the eutrophic sites, starting at the base of the food chain with benthic microalgae (BMA), which were found to use mostly sediment-derived nitrogen. Stable isotopic analysis showed that δ13C and δ15N values of most food sources and consumers varied spatially, temporally and in relation to the diversion of wastewater, whereas the earthquakes did not appear to affect the overall estuarine food web structure. This was seen particularly at the most eutrophic site, where isotopic signatures became more similar to the cleaner sites over two-and-a-half years after the diversion. New sediments (liquefaction) produced by the earthquakes were found to be coarser, have lower concentrations of heavy metals and less organic matter than old (existing) sediments. They also had fewer macroinvertebrate inhabitants initially after the earthquakes but most areas recovered to pre-earthquake abundance and diversity within two years. Field experiments showed that there were higher amounts of primary production and lower amounts of nutrient efflux from new sediments at the eutrophic sites after the earthquakes. Primary production was highest in new sediments due to the increased photosynthetic efficiency of BMA resulting from the increased permeability of new sediments allowing increased light penetration, enhanced vertical migration of BMA and the enhanced transport of oxygen and nutrients. The reduced efflux of NH4-N in new sediments indicated that the capping of a large portion of eutrophic old sediments with new sediments had reduced the release of legacy nutrients (originating from the historical discharge) from the sediments to the overlying water. Laboratory experiments using an array of species and old and new sediments showed that invertebrates altered levels of primary production and nutrient flux but effects varied among species. The mud snail Amphibola crenata and mud crab Austrohelice crassa were found to reduce primary production and BMA biomass through the consumption of BMA (both species) and its burial from bioturbation and the construction of burrows (Austrohelice). In contrast, the cockle Austrovenus stutchburyi did not significantly affect primary production and BMA biomass. These results show that changes in the structure of invertebrate communities resulting from disturbances can also have consequences for the functioning of the system. The major conclusions of this study were that the wastewater diversion had a major effect on food web dynamics and that the large quantities of clean and unpolluted new sediments introduced to the estuary during the earthquakes altered the recovery trajectory of the estuary, accelerating it at least throughout the duration of this study. This was largely through the ‘capping’ effect of the new liquefied, coarser-grained sediments as they dissipated across the estuary and covered much of the old organic-rich eutrophic sediments. For all aspects of this study, the largest changes occurred at the most eutrophic sites; however, the surrounding habitats were important as they provided the context for recovery of the estuary, particularly because of the very strong influence of sediments, their biogeochemistry, microalgal and macroalgal dynamics. There have been few studies documenting system level responses to eutrophication amelioration and to the best on my knowledge there are no other published studies examining the impacts of large earthquakes on benthic communities in an estuarine ecosystem. This research gives valuable insight and advancements in the scientific understanding of the effects that eutrophication recovery and large-scale disturbances can have on the ecology of a soft-sediment ecosystem.
In the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake, a state of polycentric urbanity was thrust upon New Zealand’s second largest city. As the city-centre lay in disrepair, smaller centres started to materialise elsewhere, out of necessity. Transforming former urban peripheries and within existing suburbs into a collective, dispersed alternative to the city centre, these sub-centres prompted a range of morphological, socio-cultural and political transformations, and begged multiple questions: how to imbue these new sub-centres with gravity? How to render them a genuine alternative to the CBD? How do they operate within the wider city? How to cope with the physical and cultural transformations of this shifting urbanscape and prevent them occurring ad lib? Indeed, the success and functioning of the larger urban structure hinges upon a critical, informed response to these sub-centre urban contexts. Yet, with an unrelenting focus on the CBD rebuild - effectively a polycentric denial - little such attention has been granted. Taking this urban condition as its premise and its provocation, this thesis investigates architecture’s role in the emergent sub-centre. It asks: what can architecture do in these urban contexts; how can architecture act upon the emergent sub-centre in a critical, catalytic fashion? Identifying this volatile condition as both an opportunity for architectural experimentation and a need for critical architectural engagement, this thesis seeks to explore the sub-centre (as an idea and actual urban context) as architecture’s project: its raison d’etre, impetus and aspiration. These inquiries are tested through design-led research: an initial design question provoking further, broader discursive research (and indeed, seeking broader implications). The first section is a site-specific, design for Sumner, Christchurch. Titled ‘An Agora Anew’; this project - both in conception and outcome - is a speculative response to a specific sub-centre condition. The second section ‘The Sub-centre as Architecture’s Project’ explores the ideas provoked by the design project within a discursive framework. Firstly it identifies the sub-centre as a context in desperate need of architectural attention (why architecture?); secondly, it negotiates a possible agenda for architecture in this context through terms of engagement that are formal, critical and opportunistic (how architecture?): enabling it to take a position on and in the sub-centre. Lastly, a critical exegesis positions the design in regards to the broader discursive debate: critiquing it an architectural project predicated upon the idea of the sub-centre. The implications of this design-led thesis are twofold: firstly, for architecture’s role in the sub-centre (especially to Christchurch); secondly for the possibilities of architecture’s productive engagement with the city (largely through architectural form), more generally. In a century where radical, new urban contexts (of which the sub-centre is just one) are commonplace, this type of thinking – what can architecture do in the city? - is imperative.