Maungatautari

Maungatautari is a mountain near Cambridge in the Waikato region in New Zealand's central North Island. The 797 metre high mountain is an extinct stratovolcano. It is a prominent peak and is visible across the Waipa District. The mountain is the site of Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari a large ecological sanctuary and restoration project.

History

According to Waikato Tainui oral history, the mountain was named by Rakatāura / Hape, the tohunga of the Tainui migratory canoe. After settling at the Kawhia Harbour, Rakatāura and his wife Kahukeke explored the interior of the Waikato.

The New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage gives a translation of "mountain of the upright stick" for .

Geology

Maungatautari is an extinct high andesitic-dacitic stratovolcano with a prominence of at least above its surroundings and an estimated age of 1.8 ± 0.10 million years. Its eroded flanks take in most of the surrounding district of the same name as its edifice is between to in diameter but it does abut an exposed greywacke basement range to its west, south of Lake Karapiro. A wide range of volcanic rocks are found from pumiceous and ash flow deposits near the summit and hydrothermally altered andesite on its southern flanks to labradorite, pyroxene, and hornblende andesite and dacite in the bulk of the stratovolcano and a small cone of olivine basalt is located at Kairangi, to the northwest. However the Kairangi cone is much older being the most eastern of the basaltic Alexandra Volcanic Group. Maungatautari's surface ring plain deposits are mainly on the northern and northeastern flanks and include a prominent rock and debris avalanche to the north east of volume , as to its south and east the flanks are covered by the younger and very thick ignimbrite sheets from the massive Mangakino caldera complex eruptions of about 1 million years ago.

See also

• List of volcanoes in New Zealand