Ōtūmahana Estuary
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Ōtūmahana Estuary
Ōtūmahana Estuary, also known as the Karamea Estuary, is a tidal estuary in the Buller District of the West Coast Region of New Zealand. It is located at the mouth of the Karamea River and also receives the outflow of Ōtūmahana creek (also known as Granite Creek). The estuary is the third largest tidal estuary on the West Coast, after Ōkārito Lagoon Ōkārito Lagoon is a coastal lagoon on the west Coast, New Zealand, West Coast of New Zealand's South Island. It is located south of Hokitika, and covers an area of about , making it the largest unmodified coastal wetland in New Zealand. It p ... and Saltwater Lagoon. It has been classified as a Significant Wetland by the West Coast Regional Council in its Regional Land and Water Plan. A life-size bronze statue of the extinct Haast's eagle or hōkioi was erected in Karamea in 2020. The initiative was a joint undertaking of the Karamea Estuary Enhancement Project and local iwi Ngāti Waewae. The hōkioi represents the ...
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Buller District
Buller District is one of 53 districts of New Zealand, and is within the West Coast Region. It covers Westport, Karamea, Reefton and Inangahua Junction. Buller District's overall land area is . The district is administered by the Buller District Council with the seat in Westport, in which 45% of the district's population live. History It is understood by the carbon dating of umu (ovens) that the Māori people settled in this region some 700 years ago. The district takes its name from the Buller River, itself named for Charles Buller, a Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK) and director of the New Zealand Company, a UK-based company established in the early 19th century with a royal charter supporting colonisation efforts of New Zealand. During the period 1853 to 1876, the current area of Buller District was administered as part of Nelson Province. With the Abolition of Provinces Act 1876, much of the current area of Buller Distri ...
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Lagoon
A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as reefs, barrier islands, barrier peninsulas, or isthmuses. Lagoons are commonly divided into ''coastal lagoons'' (or ''barrier lagoons'') and ''atoll lagoons''. They have also been identified as occurring on mixed-sand and gravel coastlines. There is an overlap between bodies of water classified as coastal lagoons and bodies of water classified as Estuary, estuaries. Lagoons are common coastal features around many parts of the world. Definition and terminology Lagoons are shallow, often elongated bodies of water separated from a larger body of water by a shallow or exposed shoal, reef, coral reef, or similar feature. Some authorities include fresh water bodies in the definition of "lagoon", while others explicitly restrict "lagoon" to bodies of water with some degree of salinity. The distinction between "lagoon" and "estuary" also varies between authorities. Richard A. Davis J ...
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Karamea River
The Karamea River is located in the West Coast Region, West Coast Region of the South Island of New Zealand. The river rises within Kahurangi National Park in the Matiri Range of the Southern Alps (New Zealand), Southern Alps. The river rises to the east of Mount Allen, West Coast, Mount Allen, meandering west briefly before turning north. After some it again turns west, to enter a series of small lakes where its waters are joined by those of the Roaring Lion River. From here the river continues west through steep-sided valleys before leaving the national park and reaching its floodplain from the coast of the Tasman Sea. The river passes the small settlements of Umere and Arapito before reaching the Ōtūmahana Estuary and the Tasman Sea close to the township of Karamea. The river has a catchment area, including its tributaries, of , representing around 23% of the entire area of Kahurangi National Park. Flood risk There is a history of flooding from the Karamea River. In 18 ...
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Tasman Sea
The Tasman Sea is a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean, situated between Australia and New Zealand. It measures about across and about from north to south. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman, who in 1642 was the first known person to cross it. British explorer Lieutenant James Cook later extensively navigated the Tasman Sea in the 1770s during his three voyages of exploration. The Māori people of New Zealand call this sea ''Te Moana-a-Rehua'' meaning 'the sea of Rehua' which clashes with the Pacific waters named ''Te Tai-o-Whitirea'' ('the sea of Whitirea') – after Whitirea, Rehua's lover – at Cape Reinga, the northernmost tip of North Island. Climate The south of the sea is passed over by depressions going from west to east. The northern limit of these westerly winds is near to 40th parallel south, 40°S. During the southern winter, from April to October, the northern branch of these winds from the west changes its direction toward th ...
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West Coast Region
The West Coast () is a region of New Zealand on the west coast of the South Island. It is administered by the West Coast Regional Council, and is known co-officially as Te Tai Poutini. It comprises the territorial authorities of Buller District, Grey District and Westland District. The principal towns are Westport, Greymouth and Hokitika. The region, one of the more remote areas of the country, is also the most sparsely populated. With a population of just 32,900 people, the West Coast is the least populous region in New Zealand. The population in the region grew by 0.4% over the year to July 2023. The region has a rich and important history. The land itself is ancient, stretching back to the Carboniferous period; this is evident by the amount of carboniferous materials naturally found there, especially coal. First settled by Kāi Tahu in approximately 1200 AD, the area was famous across New Zealand for its richness in pounamu greenstone. Kāi Tahu traded millions of modern ...
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Ōkārito Lagoon
Ōkārito Lagoon is a coastal lagoon on the west Coast, New Zealand, West Coast of New Zealand's South Island. It is located south of Hokitika, and covers an area of about , making it the largest unmodified coastal wetland in New Zealand. It preserves a sequence of vegetation types from mature Dacrydium cupressinum, rimu forest through Leptospermum scoparium, mānuka scrub to brackish water that has been lost in much of the rest of the West Coast. The settlement of Ōkārito is at the southern end of the lagoon. Name The lagoon's name is from the Māori language, Māori , place of, and , the young shoots of the bulrush or Typha orientalis, raupō (''Typha orientalis''), a valued food source. Another account has Ōkārito taking its name from a rangatira named Kārito, whose daughters Mapourika and Wahapako gave their names to nearby Lake Mapourika and Lake Wahapo. The lagoon's official name has been spelled with Macron (diacritic), macrons over the vowels since 2010, althoug ...
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Saltwater Lagoon
Saltwater Lagoon () is a lagoon on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island. It is in the southern Westland District, with Abut Head to the west and the village of Harihari to the east/southeast. The lagoon is located on the coast of the Tasman Sea The Tasman Sea is a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean, situated between Australia and New Zealand. It measures about across and about from north to south. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman, who in 1642 wa ... and has a narrow sea opening at the western end that lets in saltwater. No rivers feed into the lagoon, but the Hinatua River passes very close to the lagoon's eastern shore. References Westland District Lagoons of the West Coast Region {{WestCoastNZ-geo-stub ...
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Haast's Eagle
Haast's eagle (''Hieraaetus moorei'') is an Extinction, extinct species of eagle that lived in the South Island of New Zealand, commonly accepted to be the of Māori mythology.Giant eagle (''Aquila moorei''), Haast's eagle, or Pouakai
. Museum of New Zealand: Te Papa Tongarewa. Retrieved 27 October 2010.
It is the largest eagle known to have existed, with an estimated weight of , compared to the next-largest and extant harpy eagle (''Harpia harpyja''), at up to . Its massive size is explained as an evolutionary response to the size of its prey—the flightless moa—the largest of which could weigh . Haast's eagle became extinct around 1445, following the Māori history#Settlement of New Zealand, arrival of the Māori, who hunted moa to extincti ...
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Estuaries Of New Zealand
An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environments and are an example of an ecotone. Estuaries are subject both to marine influences such as tides, waves, and the influx of saline water, and to fluvial influences such as flows of freshwater and sediment. The mixing of seawater and freshwater provides high levels of nutrients both in the water column and in sediment, making estuaries among the most productive natural habitats in the world. Most existing estuaries formed during the Holocene epoch with the flooding of river-eroded or glacially scoured valleys when the sea level began to rise about 10,000–12,000 years ago. Estuaries are typically classified according to their geomorphological features or to water-circulation patterns. They can have many different names, such as bays, ha ...
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Landforms Of The West Coast Region
A landform is a land feature on the solid surface of the Earth or other planetary body. They may be natural or may be anthropogenic (caused or influenced by human activity). Landforms together make up a given terrain, and their arrangement in the landscape is known as topography. Landforms include hills, mountains, canyons, and valleys, as well as shoreline features such as bays, peninsulas, and seas, including submerged features such as mid-ocean ridges, volcanoes, and the great oceanic basins. Physical characteristics Landforms are categorized by characteristic physical attributes such as elevation, slope, orientation, structure stratification, rock exposure, and soil type. Gross physical features or landforms include intuitive elements such as berms, cliffs, hills, mounds, peninsulas, ridges, rivers, valleys, volcanoes, and numerous other structural and size-scaled (e.g. ponds vs. lakes, hills vs. mountains) elements including various kinds of inland and oceanic waterbodi ...
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