Middle-Earth Here on our Planet? Some Geo-thoughts After the Last Tolkien Movie

Mt. Ruapahu, an active volcano on the North Island of New Zealand

A new world came into being a little over eighty years ago. It formed in the mind of an English scholar, a world with a vivid geography that was populated by a plethora of men, elves, dwarfs, orcs, goblins, dragons, and hobbits. It was a fully realized world with a multitude of unique languages, creation myths, and a long history of wars, strife and horror. At other times it was a world of stunning beauty. I read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien as a teenager, and the world revealed in the pages of those books was as vivid in my own mind as the real world I lived in.

From other angles, the summit crater of Ruapahu is clearly seen. A lot of it is missing.

Over the years I could relate the places I had seen in my travels with the geography of Middle Earth. It wasn't hard to see the eastern rampart of the Sierra Nevada near Lone Pine as the mountains of Mordor, or the volcanoes of the Cascades as the Lonely Mountain of Erebor.  But Middle Earth really was unique. I knew of no setting on the planet that could really serve as a stand-in for the product of Tolkien's imagination.

Lake Rotorua sunrise (or the eye of Sauron?). Rotorua occupies an active caldera on the North Island

It is no surprise that it took three quarters of a century to bring the complete Rings trilogy and the Hobbit to the big screen, given the technological hurdles of creating an entire world on film pretty much from scratch. But under the direction of Peter Jackson and a host of others (I sat through the entire credits today at the movie), the world was realized in a total of six movies, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Hobbit broken into thirds. One of the amazing things about Jackson's accomplishment is that he managed to find a fully realized Middle-Earth right here on our own planet: the islands of New Zealand.

A foggy road between Rotorua and Wellington, the closest we came to the filming site of Hobbiton on our trip.

I have found that I can be caught up in the plot of a good movie without losing sight of the choices the directors made for their filming locations. Sometimes it is the recognition of places I know well, which was the case when I watched Wild a few weeks ago. At other times, I am taking in a new landscape, places I have never seen for myself, and wondering where they were filming. And wondering about the underlying geology. In the Tolkien movies, it has mostly been the latter, but I did have one precious opportunity to see parts of the islands of New Zealand, back in 2005. My students and I spent four days on the North Island, and two days on the South Island. It was rushed, we missed many localities I would have liked to have visited, but it was spectacular, and indeed was one of the great journeys of my life.

Tree ferns on the North Island: Echos of the Gondwana flora.

New Zealand is indeed a world apart. It was part of Australia until around eighty million years ago, but it broke away and has been isolated ever since. The non-avian dinosaurs were extirpated here during the great extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period, and what mammals were present were too small or rare to dominate the ecosystem. The islands of New Zealand became a kingdom of the birds. Many of the larger birds, having no natural enemies besides themselves, evolved away from flight and became surface dwellers. The dominance of the birds ended when humans arrived on the islands around 800 years ago, and in many ways New Zealand came to resemble the rest of the world, with farms and cities, and grazing sheep and cattle.

Yes, there were once birds this big, only a few centuries ago.

The islands of New Zealand are about two-thirds the size of California, and like California the diversity of the landscape is tied to plate tectonics. New Zealand is influenced by convergence of the Australian and Pacific plates, but some areas of the islands are stretching (extending) and others, primarily along the Alpine Fault, are sliding laterally (much like California's San Andreas). As a consequence, the islands have a diverse collection of volcanoes and calderas, a high alpine mountain range, active faults, and glaciers. Given the low density of the population of the islands, a filmmaker has plenty of choices for wilderness locales in which to place their orc armies, wizard castles, and hobbit villages (Middle-Earth always struck me as a rather wilderness world with only a few outposts of civilization).

The north end of the Kaikoura Range on the South Island, very high and rugged, but less known than the Southern Alps.

My greatest disappointment about my trip to New Zealand was the fact that I didn't get to see the Southern Alps up close. The mountains made for some of the most memorable scenes in the Tolkien movies, including the opening sequence of The Two Towers, and lighting of the beacons in The Return of the King. They could be seen in the far distance while we were in Christchurch, and they were briefly visible as we flew over them on the way to Australia, but that was it. I dearly wanted to see them up close, but that will have to come at another time.

So, to Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh and all of the others involved in the production of the movies, I want to say thank you for your vivid imagining of Middle Earth, and your meticulous and careful selection of spectacular filming locales. It added a lot to my enjoyment of the movie, and makes up for your occasional moments of overdoing the special effects (really, Legolas walking up free-falling boulders like a stairway?).

Christchurch, New Zealand Hit by Magnitude 7.0 Quake: Should Californians Pay Attention? What About God?

Update, February 22, 2011:
A horrific aftershock of magnitude 6.3 struck the Christchurch area yesterday, and dozens of people have been killed. I am saddened by the loss of life and hope the best for the survivors. Some may be wondering why the damage is worse with a lesser aftershock. The quake yesterday was closer to Christchurch and more shallow. That alone can account for the great amount of damage, but building damage is also cumulative. Many of the buildings damaged in September had not been fixed or reinforced, and thus were subject to collapse with the newer quake. Please check here for up-to-date geological information.

The original post follows:

Quick, think of a place in the world where a transform boundary has formed a seriously big fault line, a place where folks are waiting for the "Big One", a place where a magnitude 7 quake is not considered the "Big One" (and think of how people don't really want to think about that)....

Not San Francisco Bay! This is Lyttelton Harbour near Christchurch, New Zealand.

If you are one of my local readers, you will be forgiven for thinking of California, where the San Andreas and many other active faults threaten a large population, and where memories of the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, the 1994 Northridge quake, the 2003 Paso Robles quake, and the 2010 Baja quake are still raw. But this year, we have seen other places where elements of the geology are similar, and where disastrous earthquakes have occurred. Last January, Haiti was devastated by a magnitude 7.0 quake on a strike-slip (horizontal movement) fault zone along a transform plate boundary in the Caribbean Sea, and yesterday Christchurch and other towns on the Canterbury Plain of the South Island of New Zealand were shaken by a magnitude 7.0 event. There are some chilling comparisons to be made between these events (and the 8.8 magnitude event in Chile last February). Chris at Highly Allochthonous has a nice review of the geological background of the earthquake.

I was saddened to hear of the earthquake in Christchurch, and was relieved that there were so few casualties despite the widespread damage. I was privileged to visit there for all of 24 hours back in 2004, but I found it to be a pleasant town in a beautiful geologic setting. My prayers are with those in the region, because although few were injured, the population faces weeks or months of difficult times. Sewers and water lines, gas mains, and other types of infrastructure were severely affected by the shaking, and as many as 20% of homes are uninhabitable.

There are some similarities between the South Island of New Zealand and California: The Alpine Fault is a large scale strike-slip fault system like the San Andreas, which is capable of producing large earthquakes in the range of magnitude 8 (a related fault on the North Island, near Napier, generated a 7.8 quake in 1931, killing 256 people). Like the San Andreas, a bigger quake is expected in the "near" future along the South Island stretch of the fault zone, the so-called "Big One". There are high mountain ranges, the Southern Alps, and the Kaikouras, that might remind some of the Sierra Nevada, although the geological circumstances are different.
Some comparisons are more harrowing. The Baja quake this year and the one in Christchurch both involved few casualties, despite magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.0 respectively. Yet in Haiti, a 7.0 magnitude quake killed more than 200,000 people. Why? There are a number of factors: the Baja quake was in a lightly populated area, for one. But 500,000 people lived in the area affected by the New Zealand quake yesterday. One difference: the New Zealanders have a history of damaging quakes, and have high architectural standards. In Haiti, it had been 300 years since a large earthquake had taken place, and the country is so poor that they couldn't afford to enforce standards even if they had laws on the books.

Another possibility may have saved a great many lives in New Zealand: the quake may have actually been a complex event involving three different quakes. The first quake may have been a 5.8 magnitude foreshock five seconds before the main shock. Five seconds is an eternity in an earthquake, enough to wake people to full consciousness, and enough time for them to make the right survival decision by taking shelter.

It wasn't long before the word "miracle" popped up in relation to the earthquake in New Zealand. I have a real problem with the use of that word in relation to natural disasters. Miracles are invoked if hardly anyone was hurt, as if God (or the gods) were smiling on the folks where the earthquake was happening. But "miracle" is also a term used when rescuers reach a trapped person days after a quake when thousands of others are dead. What does that mean to the families of those who were killed? Why was one person "chosen"? When dealing with natural disasters, we really have to look at the fact that some societies have the resources and knowledge to protect their citizens, and others, whether from corruption or external economic factors, do not. If someone survives a disaster, it is often the result of planning, education, and available resources.

Some of the most despicable people on this planet are the ones like the 'evangelist' Pat Robertson who are so quick to declare that natural disasters are the judgement of God upon people. Mr. Robertson rather stupidly declared that the Haiti earthquake happened because of a pact with the devil 200 some years ago. Why would anyone worship a god so capricious and inefficient that he waits 200 years to get around to punishing the children of the children of the children of the people who committed some kind of sin? Picking and choosing the reasons for a particular natural disaster in regards to the judgement of a deity is a dangerous and evil pathway that will someday come back on you.

My religious and ethical beliefs speak of the equality and value of each human being on this planet, but our planet is not a very equal place. Sometimes, certain citizens of the richest countries have an arrogance and sense of entitlement that is not actually particularly deserved. Any of us could become a victim of a natural disaster at any time. Haiti is still in a desperate place; have you donated anything lately to help?

Postscript: See this article in "Ask The Pilot" for a perspective on "miracles" in plane accidents.

Postscript 2: An excellent post on the fault offsets on the Canterbury Plain, with maps and photos can be found here.