Special section--Origin of the Southern Alps II
Foreword

In late August 1994, a 1¹/2 day symposium on the Origin of the Southern Alps was convened by the New Zealand Geophysical Society at Victoria University, Wellington. It is from the 23 papers presented at the symposium that this special issue of the New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics is largely derived. "Origin of the Southern Alps II" is the title selected for this issue as the Society sees this work as a continuation of that contained in a collection of papers titled "Origin of the Southern Alps" and published in 1979 as Bulletin 18 of The Royal Society of New Zealand. By according a sequence number to the title of the present volume we hopefully lay the ground for Origin of the Southern Alps III to appear sometime in the next 10-15 years.

A feature of Origin of the Southern Alps II was the multi-disciplinary nature of the meeting. Geologists, geochemists, and geophysicists each delivered their perspective on a common structure. What became particularly evident was that we have the enviable situation of a dipping structure at the Earth's surface--the schist belt--which can be observed and carefully studied by geologists and geochemists, and that this structure is traceable to depth using geophysical means. A further common theme is indirect evidence from some of the studies for a ductile process occurring in the mid to lower crust of the South Island. The case for ductile flow from any one study on its own remains equivocal, but if evidence from the various disciplines is taken as a whole the picture becomes more compelling.

The New Zealand Geophysical Society is thanked for making this symposium happen. Special thanks go to John Taber and Helen Anderson who provided much of the drive to make the meeting a success.

TIM STERN

Research School of Earth Sciences

Victoria University of Wellington

Wellington, New Zealand

PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (43K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)

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