The ecology staff are back at work today. Offices have been tidied, labs set right and we will be open for lectures on Monday. Ecology at Lincoln seems to have gotten off lightly after the big quake and aftershocks. The Entomology Research Museum is largely intact with some damage to one of the rows of cabinets (but it did the job in protecting the specimens). The wet collection is also intact. John Marris, the curator, took the accompanying photo. His office was in much worse condition!
Interestingly, ecology staff at Lincoln have done research over the last couple of decades on the impact of earthquakes on forests in New Zealand. Richard Duncan and Glenn Stewart have looked at the periodicity of when trees were knocked over by earthquakes to get a picture of when future big quakes were dues. As they have reminded us for a decade, we are well overdue for a large alpine fault quake. Unfortunately, the one earlier this week was from a fault on the Canterbury Plains and we still await the other!