Dating timeline Whangarei New Zeland

By matching the overlapping ring patterns with those from slightly older trees, you can extend the tree ring record back further again, and so on. Boswijk and colleagues have taken cores from living trees dating back to They have also sampled historical timber from 19th-century buildings and archaeological sites, which stretched the chronology back to —early enough to cross over with the youngest swamp kauri. They now have a continuous sequence of tree rings extending out to BC—a span of four and a half thousand years. Why is this so important? And so the tree rings, these natural archives, allow us to reconstruct environmental history.

Out beyond the end of the tree-ring chronology, scientists use radiocarbon dating to establish the approximate age of sub-fossil kauri. Pollen records show there were kauri in New Zealand at this time, but no specimens have yet been found. Sea levels were at least metres lower than they are today, so perhaps the kauri were all growing out on the continental shelf, and are now covered in water. Around 26, years ago, the swamp kauri appears again, scattered through the millennia all the way out to the limits of radiocarbon dating at 60, years.

He sees himself as a steward, taking care of a precious resource. We know there were wildly oscillating climate variations at that time, changes in ice sheets, changes in sea level—and we are the only ones that made it out of that period.

The more we understand how those things are interconnected, the more we can forearm ourselves and prepare for future changes. To cover 30, years of prehistory, Lorrey and his colleagues need to find an overlapping set of trees that were alive during every one of those years.

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And at the moment, the only way to get them is to partner with kauri extractors. Other times, the researchers cut the biscuits themselves as the trees come out of the ground. In return, they offer information about the wood that can add value to the products. Is there a contradiction, though, between collecting material that can help us answer some important big-picture environmental questions, while relying on an industry that, in some cases, has damaged the local environment? The NIWA team accepts donations of swamp kauri on the understanding it was extracted and acquired legally.

Fees, University of Otago, New Zealand

Ideally, Lorrey says, extractors would register each site and willingly provide a sufficient number of samples for scientific purposes. In the meantime, though, kauri keeps leaving the ground and leaving the country. Lorrey says his biggest fear is not being able to keep up. People are scrambling to collect them right now as the ice sheets melt. For the scientists—and the environmentalists and bureaucrats— has brought a temporary reprieve. According to MPI, reported swamp-kauri exports for the first two quarters of this year are down 80 per cent from the highs of the previous three years.

Extraction seems to have slowed, too. Oravida and NZ Forests Ltd are sitting on huge stockpiles of wood. From a peak of 13 operators in the Kaitaia area during the boom, just one is currently digging—although that activity may pick up again when the ground dries out in the summer. Nelson Parker is one of the few who are still buying logs. I know the tap can turn on just as it turns off. No one knows whether the slowdown is a blip or a trend, but this could be the perfect time to improve how we manage this rare and irreplaceable resource to ensure some survives—maybe not for the next 60, years, but at least for the next generation.

It was the case that brought national attention to the swamp-kauri trade—the most flagrant example of wetland destruction and the only time any extractors or exporters of the wood have been prosecuted. The kauri diggers ignored a Northland Regional Council warning to stop work, then breached two Environment Court orders as well. It is still chasing Beckham for his share, but this year his company, too, was placed into liquidation.

Ministry for Primary Industries Homepage

Beckham started a new company and continued to extract and export swamp kauri, but the chances of any fines being paid over the crime seem low. Even more concerning was a strange incident that occurred during the court case.

Someone walked up to his car window, and before he could see who it was, he was attacked—bleach thrown in his eyes, face slashed with a knife. He was left temporarily blinded on the roadside. Police inquiries came to nothing, and the crime remains unresolved. This was deeply unsettling for those asking questions and speaking out about the swamp-kauri trade, confirming a widely held fear about undercurrents of violence in the industry.

Alby Hall, an experienced wood turner and sculptor at the Ancient Kauri Kingdom extraction, milling and manufacturing company in Awanui, said that two years ago, things were tense. And it was pretty touchy whether people would be kind enough to let you alone if you said something.

But Hall is now convinced that those times are past, believing the worst elements have mostly gone bankrupt and gotten out of the game.

Extractor and exporter Nelson Parker agrees. Down the end of a long gravel road, out the back of Mangonui, Williams lives quietly with his family next to a river. In his home-built shed, he makes beautifully crafted musical instruments from New Zealand native timbers, including swamp kauri. Williams has been a luthier for 20 years. When he moved to Northland, he sought out people in the timber industry, showing them what he could make, and asking if they had anything special tucked away.

When kauri extractor contacts found a particularly promising log, they would phone him. They have a real and genuine interest in using it appropriately, in a way that honours the beauty of the wood. It took less than 10 years for the northern hemisphere climate to change abruptly.

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This was the start of a period called the Younger Dryas, a thousand-year cold snap starting around 12, years ago, and a compelling recent example of dramatic climate change. Oceanic circulation patterns were disrupted, global sea levels suddenly rose, megafauna died out, and modern humans walked into the Americas. As the northern hemisphere froze, here in the south, temperatures were higher than normal. Radiocarbon, or C14—a radioactive carbon isotope—builds up in plants as they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand.

Archived from the original on 2 June Reserve Bank of New Zealand.

Archived from the original on 15 January Archived from the original on 10 October Statistics New Zealand. Archived from the original on 13 November One News. The Sunday Star-Times. National Business Review. Archived from the original on 3 August Archived from the original on 8 September Archived from the original on 29 January Retrieved 16 January Retrieved 28 November Years in New Zealand. Regions Territorial authorities.

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