Sand provenance of Poverty Shelf, North Island, New Zealand

The purpose of this study was to determine the provenance of sand on the Poverty Shelf, North Island, New Zealand. The hypotheses tested are: 1) that sedimentary signals from the Waipaoa River are translated and preserved as sandy beds on the Poverty Shelf; and 2) that the Waipaoa Sedimentary System (WSS) is a closed system, and therefore an ideal place to conduct a sedimentary budget study as set forth by the MARGINS Source-to-Sink community of scientists. This study suggests that Waipaoa River does not contribute significant sand to the shelf, that there may have been extrabasinal input of coarse sediment to the shelf, and that the system is much more complex than originally thought with respect to sand origin and distribution. (See more in text.)