Kathy's back and she's in New Zealand (19°20'N, 81°22'W)!! Sad that we had to depart from Marty, Jill and the spectacular island of Saint Vincent : ( . We arrived two days ago and so far we've just relaxed and gotten used to our completely different surroundings! Right now I'm at lunch with our new tour guides, Brandi and Chase and my sis! They're teaching us all about what a Transform boundary is and what it does in New Zealand. They say that a transform boundary is when two plates are sliding past each other. A transform boundary can form mid-ocean ridges and faults. Here in New Zealand, the Pacific plate and the Australian plate are sliding past each other resulting in the Alpine fault.
Earthquakes are very common at transform boundaries. In the past 900 years, the Alpine fault has ruptured four times resulting in very high magnitude earthquakes (at least 8 magnitude)! Recently in July of 2012, there was an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude right off the coast of where I'm staying! Wow! Although volcanoes do not occur at transform boundaries, there are some in New Zealand due to the other types of plate boundaries here. The volcanoes are mainly on the North Island at Mt. Ruapahu and the last eruption was in 1996.
New Zealand is truly an amazing place to visit and I highly recommend it!!! The variety and presence of the different plate boundaries here make for some cool things to happen!
I'll talk to you soon,
Kathy
