Episode 5 of the envirohistory NZ podcast series is now out. This episode explores the critical link between environmental history and the decisions we make about how we shape and live within the environment. To illustrate the importance of environmental history in helping to inform environmental policy and planning decisions, this episode reflects on two recent natural disasters – the February 22nd Canterbury earthquake and the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in north-eastern Japan. (more…)
April 5, 2011
envirohistory NZ podcast – episode 5 out now!
Posted by envirohistorynz under commentary | Tags: Canterbury earthquake, disasters, envirohistory NZ, Environmental History, environmental planning, environmental policy, episode 5, Japan, Northeast Japan, podcast, Tohoku, tsunami |Leave a Comment
March 13, 2011
Nature strikes again – beautiful Tohoku’s coastal towns devastated by tsunami
Posted by envirohistorynz under commentary | Tags: 11 March 2011, Ainu, Asiatic black bear, Christchurch earthquake, coastal towns, earthquake, Hayachine Shrine, Iwate, Japan, Jomon, Kamaishi, map of Tohoku, Miyako, New Zealand, Ofunato, Rikuzentakata, tidal wave, Tohoku, tsunami, Yamadera Temple, Yayoi |[6] Comments
Once again, I find myself writing about a place that I hold great affection for, after it has been devastated by a natural disaster [see also: Christchurch - a city haunted by its environmental past]. This time the north-east of Japan, where a tsunami (tidal wave) of up to 10 metres high struck the eastern coast, following the magnitude 8.9 earthquake of 11 March. (more…)
June 26, 2010
The abandonment of Palliser Bay – a prehistoric case of environmental degradation?
Posted by envirohistorynz under commentary | Tags: archaeology, birds, Bruce McFadgen, coastal community, deforestation, earthquake, Environmental History, erosion, Gavin McLean, kumara, Maori gardening, Maori impact on the environment, New Zealand, Okoropunga, Palliser Bay, prehistory, shellfish, tsunami, Wairarapa |[2] Comments
Archaeological evidence shows that Maori occupied the south-east coast of the North Island, including Palliser Bay, by the 14th century. Research in the 1970s by Foss and Helen Leach of Otago University showed that people lived in small settlements at stream and river mouths. The people were both gardeners and hunters and gatherers, reliant on what they could take from the forest, rivers, streams, coastal lagoons and the sea – the main sources of food were likely to have been small birds, fish, seals and kūmara (sweet potato). There is evidence of about 300 people in six separate communities on the eastern side of the Palliser Bay. Yet by the 1600s these settlements had gone. (more…)
January 21, 2012
Did tsunami cause resource wars in prehistoric New Zealand?
Posted by envirohistorynz under commentary | Tags: Environmental History, Maori, moa, archaeology, tsunami, natural disasters, prehistoric New Zealand, moa-hunters, seals, pa sites, prehistoric resource scarcity, coastal settlements, Hostile Shores, Dr Bruce McFadgen, pa, Maori settlement patterns, Parihaka Pa, Maori warfare |Leave a Comment
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