Gidday. I thought that it was time for me (Ted) to write on here and give an update of some things that I've been doing at work, so here goes.

Volcano Study: The first month I was here (March), I was in the middle of the North Island at Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngaurahoe (better know as Mt Doom from the Lord of the Rings). We flew around these volcanoes for about a month making measurements of the Earth's resistivity at ~100 locations. Meg helped out for a weekend and got a few heli rides too. The weather was great and the views amazing. Perhaps the highlight was getting flown up to, and dropped off on the summit of Mt Ngaurahoe. We made a measurement just outside of the crater, very cool! By the way, this is an active volcano, but there isn't any lava in the crater, it's all just rock at the moment. Once the pressure below builds up enough, magma in the subsurface will then erupt, and you'll hear about it on the news! Related to that... the measurements that we made will help to image the magma below the volcano. This information is quite useful to those who monitor this natural hazard.

Geothermal Work: After the volcano fieldwork, I was in Taupo (NE of the volcanoes) for about 2 weeks making measurements with the same equipment, but this time working on a geothermal energy project. New Zealand currently gets ~15% of the countries power production from geothermal energy. Basically, below the North Island of New Zealand, one tectonic plate (Pacific) is sliding beneath another one (Australian). This process generates a lot of heat, and fluids. The end result near Taupo, is that water 2-3 km below the ground is at ~350 degrees. So, energy companies drill to this depth, extract the water, at the surface it flashes to steam and they use it to drive turbines to generate electricity. The steam is then condensed and nowadays is starting to be sent back into the earth to complete the cycle. So this method of power generation has a minimal impact on the environment. Good!

Now, what am I doing? Well, the government wants to increase geothermal energy production and move away from nastier sources of energy. This will require companies to drill deeper (~4-5km) where fluid temperatures are hotter. So, to nudge companies to explore deeper (which costs more money) a project has been funded to image the deeper structures of the geothermal systems. This is what I'm working on at the moment.

What else... I'm heading to Taiwan next week for a conference and looking forward to that. I haven't been back to Taiwan since I was there collecting data for my PhD, so it will be fun to return and hang out with Chih-Wen, the student I was with while collecting my PhD data.

Other than that, Meg and I are anxiously awaiting getting to move into our new home on July 2! Less than 3 weeks away now...

To finish off, as Meg's been doing I'll explain a Kiwi phrase.
Phrase: Rattle your dags.
Translation: 'hurry up' or 'get a move on'.
Explanation: 'dags' are sheep poops that defied gravity by clinging to the sheeps bum wool. Over time, these harden up and become a permanent fixture. Then the farmer comes along to sheppard his flock, the sheep run and subsequently their dags 'rattle' to and fro.

Take care
Meg and Ted