Murry Cave is the Principal Scientist at Gisborne District Council where he has a strong focus on natural hazards and the environmental response to severe events. A particular interest has been in the landscape response to severe storms and the role of landuse in driving landscape change. This includes landslide distribution and style over time, and the relationship to landuse and vegetative cover. The unfortunate propensity of the landscape response to severe weather events has been the generation of and migration of large woody debris from steep inland forests (particularly planation forests) through the catchments to the coastal environment, and dealing with this wicked problem occupies far too much of Murry’s time
The erosional impact of the 2017-present stormy cycle on the coastal environment of Gisborne/Tairawhiti
Since 2017 the Gisborne-Tairawhiti region has experienced multiple storms many of which have had a strong coastal impact. Significant shoreline changes have occurred at many sites as a result ranging from damage to a legacy landffill at Te Araroa, erosion of Urupa at Anaura Bay and Whangara, damage to council facilities at Tokomaru Bay, beach erosion at Wainui Beach, at Sponge Bay and coastal retreat of the dune system at Tolaga bay. The impact at these various sites have been variable with some showing incremental chnage over time while others have experienced instantaneous change as a result of specific storms, particularly those associated with strong storm surge events. The response depending on the situation has been to defend (Te Araroa Landfill, Araua and Whangara Urupa, and Wainui Beach), protect through soft engineering (Tolaga Bay South), and monitor and retreat (Tokomaru Bay, Sponge Bay, and Tolaga Bay north). The underpinning drivers differ from site to site with sediment supply and transport a key element although more work is required to fully understand these underpinning mechanisms.
