DIRECT MARINE TERRESTRIAL CORRELATIONS, WANGANUI BASIN, NEW-ZEALAND - THE LAST 1 MILLION YEARS

Wanganui Basin, a back-are basin in North Island, New Zealand, contains a detailed sequence of interfingering terrestrial and shallow marine sediments spanning the entire Quaternary. Rhyolite tephras erupted from the Taupo Volcanic Zone, together with magnetostratigraphy and biostratigraphy, facilitate correlations between Wanganui Basin and the astronomically calibrated oxygen isotope chronology of deep sea cores, particularly over the last 1 Ma. Eustatic changes are interpreted from both marine (shelf) sediments and marine terraces within the basin. Non-marine sediments, including loess, dunesand, and alluvial deposits, coupled with pollen analyses, are used to interpret climatic changes; they can also be directly related to the marine record through strati graphic relations between marine and non-marine deposits in the basin.