Gerald McCormack, CINHT,
Illustration of Mangaia – Judith Künzle
About two million years ago, when Mangaia was around 17 million years old, the whole island started to lift upward out of the sea. At that time, or sometime later, Mangaia was a wide coastal plain of exposed reef-rock adjoining a rounded central mountain, about 100 metres high. The exposed reef-rock is known in Mäori as makatea.
As the streams carried the volcanic soil off the mountain to the sea they deposited large amounts on the exposed reef-rock. Today, this red soil makes fertile pockets on the makatea, typically planted with Tuitui (Candlenut, Aleurites moluccanus) and subsistence food crops. Continue reading →
