Lake Taupō (also spelled Taupo; or ) is a large crater lake in

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

North Island The North Island ( , 'the fish of Māui', historically New Ulster) is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but less populous South Island by Cook Strait. With an area of , it is the List ...

, located in the

caldera A caldera ( ) is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcanic eruption. An eruption that ejects large volumes of magma over a short period of time can cause significant detriment to the str ...

of Taupō Volcano. The lake is the namesake of the town of

Taupō Taupō (), sometimes written Taupo, is a town located in the central North Island of New Zealand. It is situated on the edge of Lake Taupō, which is the largest freshwater lake in New Zealand. Taupō was constituted as a borough in 1953. It h ...

, which sits on a bay in the lake's northeastern shore. With a surface area of , it is the largest lake by surface area in

, and the second largest freshwater lake by surface area in geopolitical

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after Lake Murray in

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. Motutaiko Island lies in the southeastern area of the lake.

Geography

Lake Taupō has a perimeter of approximately and a maximum depth of . It is drained by the

Waikato River The Waikato River is the longest river in New Zealand, running for through the North Island. It rises on the eastern slopes of Mount Ruapehu, joining the Tongariro River system and flowing through Lake Taupō, New Zealand's largest lake. It th ...

(New Zealand's longest river), and its main tributaries are the Waitahanui River, the Tongariro River, and the Tauranga Taupō River. It is a noted

trout Trout (: trout) is a generic common name for numerous species of carnivorous freshwater ray-finned fishes belonging to the genera '' Oncorhynchus'', ''Salmo'' and ''Salvelinus'', all of which are members of the subfamily Salmoninae in the ...

fishery with stocks of introduced

brown Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing and painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors Orange (colour), orange and black. In the ...

and

rainbow trout The rainbow trout (''Oncorhynchus mykiss'') is a species of trout native to cold-water tributary, tributaries of the Pacific Ocean in North America and Asia. The steelhead (sometimes called steelhead trout) is an Fish migration#Classification, ...

. The level of the lake is controlled by

Mercury Energy Mercury NZ Limited is a New Zealand electricity generation and multi-product utility retailer of electricity, gas, broadband and mobile telephone services. All the company's electricity generation is renewable. Mercury has a pre-paid electrici ...

, the owner of the eight hydroelectric dams on the Waikato River downstream of Lake Taupō, using gates built in 1940–41. The gates are used to reduce flooding, conserve water and ensure a minimum flow of in the Waikato River. The

resource consent A resource consent is the authorisation given to certain activities or uses of natural and physical resources required under the New Zealand Resource Management Act (the "RMA"). Some activities may either be specifically authorised by the RMA or ...

allows the level of the lake to be varied between above sea level.

Lake formation and volcanism

Lake Taupō is in a caldera created mainly by a supervolcanic eruption which occurred approximately 25,600 years ago. According to geological records, the

volcano A volcano is commonly defined as a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most oft ...

has erupted 29 times in the last 30,000 years. It has ejected mostly

rhyolitic Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals ( phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained groundmass. The miner ...

lava Lava is molten or partially molten rock (magma) that has been expelled from the interior of a terrestrial planet (such as Earth) or a Natural satellite, moon onto its surface. Lava may be erupted at a volcano or through a Fissure vent, fractu ...

, although Mount Tauhara formed from dacitic lava. Taupō has been active for 300,000 years with a very large event known as the Oruanui eruption occurring approximately 25,600 years ago. It was the world's largest known eruption over the past 70,000 years, ejecting 1170 cubic kilometres of material and causing several hundred square kilometres of surrounding

land Land, also known as dry land, ground, or earth, is the solid terrestrial surface of Earth not submerged by the ocean or another body of water. It makes up 29.2% of Earth's surface and includes all continents and islands. Earth's land sur ...

to collapse and form the caldera. The caldera later filled with water to form Lake Taupō, eventually overflowing to cause a huge

outburst flood In geomorphology, an outburst flood—a type of megaflood—is a high-magnitude, low-frequency catastrophic flood involving the sudden release of a large quantity of water. During the last deglaciation, numerous glacial lake outburst floods were ...

. Several later eruptions occurred over the millennia before the most recent major eruption, which was traditionally dated as about 181 CE from

Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

ice-core records. Tree ring data from two studies suggests a later date of 232 CE ± 5 and this is now accepted. Known as the Hatepe eruption, it is believed to have ejected 100 cubic kilometres of material, of which 30 cubic kilometres was ejected in a few minutes. This was one of the most powerful eruptions in the last 5000 years (alongside the Minoan eruption in the 2nd millennium BCE, the Tianchi eruption of Baekdu around 1000 CE and the 1815 eruption of Tambora), with a

Volcanic Explosivity Index The volcanic explosivity index (VEI) is a scale used to measure the size of explosive volcanic eruptions. It was devised by Christopher G. Newhall of the United States Geological Survey and Stephen Self in 1982. Volume of products, eruption c ...

rating of 7; and there appears to be a correlation, to within a few years, of a year in which the sky was red over

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and

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. The eruption devastated much of the North Island and further expanded the lake. The area was uninhabited by humans at the time of the eruption, as New Zealand was not settled by Māori until about 1280. Possible climatic effects of the eruption would have been concentrated on the Southern Hemisphere due to the southerly position of Lake Taupō. Taupō's last known eruption occurred around 30 years later, with lava dome extrusion forming the Horomatangi Reefs, but that eruption was much smaller than the Hatepe eruption. Underwater hydrothermal activity continues near the Horomatangi vent, and nearby geothermal fields with associated hot springs are found north and south of the lake, for example at Rotokawa and Tūrangi. These springs are the site of occurrence of certain

extremophile An extremophile () is an organism that is able to live (or in some cases thrive) in extreme environments, i.e., environments with conditions approaching or stretching the limits of what known life can adapt to, such as extreme temperature, press ...

micro-organisms, that are capable of surviving in extremely hot environments. The volcano is considered active and is monitored by GNS Science.

Biota

Much of the watershed of Lake Taupō is a beech and podocarp forest with associate

understory In forestry and ecology, understory (American English), or understorey (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English), also known as underbrush or undergrowth, includes plant life growing beneath the Canopy (biology), forest ca ...

ferns being '' Blechnum filiforme'', '' Asplenium flaccidum'', '' Doodia media'', '' Hymenophyllum demissum'', '' Microsorum pustulatum'' and '' Dendroconche scandens'', and some prominent associate shrubs being '' Olearia rani'' and '' Alseuosmia quercifolia''. Native faunal species in the lake include northern kōura or crayfish (''Paranephrops planifrons'') and kōkopu or

whitebait Whitebait is a collective term for the immature fry of fish, typically between long. Such young fish often travel together in schools along coasts, and move into estuaries and sometimes up rivers where they can be easily caught using fine-mes ...

('' Galaxias'' species). The lake is noted for stocks of

brown trout The brown trout (''Salmo trutta'') is a species of salmonid ray-finned fish and the most widely distributed species of the genus ''Salmo'', endemic to most of Europe, West Asia and parts of North Africa, and has been widely introduced globally ...

(''Salmo trutta'') and

(''Oncorhynchus mykiss''), introduced from Europe and California respectively in the late nineteenth century. There has also been a subsequent introduction of smelt ( Retropinnidae species) as a food for the trout. A community of sponges and associated invertebrates live around the underwater geothermal vents.

Tourism

Tourism is a major component of Taupō's commercial sector. The busiest time for the industry is the high summer season around Christmas and New Year. The lake area has a temperate climate. Daily maximum temperatures recorded for Taupō range from an average of 23.3 °C in January and February to 11.2 °C in July, while the nighttime minimum temperatures range from 11.6 °C in February down to 2.2 °C in July. Rain falls in all seasons but is greatest in winter and spring, from June to December. Taupō hosts the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge, a cycling tour around the lake which can take anywhere between four and ten hours.

Skydiving Parachuting and skydiving are methods of descending from a high point in an atmosphere to the ground or ocean surface with the aid of gravity, involving the control of speed during the descent using a parachute or multiple parachutes. For hu ...

is a popular local sport and tourist attraction. Taupō also hosts the ANZCO Ironman event. Crossing the 40.2 km length of the lake is a challenge for open-water swimmers. In 2020, Michael Wells from Darwin, Australia, was the first to breaststroke across the lake.

Māori rock carving

On the north-west side of Lake Taupō on the cliffs of Mine Bay, there are Māori rock carvings created in the late 1970s by Matahi Whakataka-Brightwell and John Randall. Carved in the likeness of Ngātoro-i-rangi, a navigator who guided the Tūwharetoa and Te Arawa tribes to the Taupō area over a thousand years ago according to Māori legend. The 10-metre-high carving is intended to protect Lake Taupō from volcanic activities underneath. The cliff has become a popular tourist destination with hundreds of boats and yachts visiting the spot yearly.

Māori tribes

Lake Taupō is a

taonga ''Taonga'' or ''taoka'' (in South Island Māori) is a Māori-language word that refers to a treasured possession in Māori culture. It lacks a direct translation into English, making its use in the Treaty of Waitangi significant. The current ...

(treasure or something special to the person) of

Ngāti Tūwharetoa Ngāti Tūwharetoa is an iwi descended from Ngātoro-i-rangi, the priest who navigated the Arawa canoe to New Zealand. The Tūwharetoa region extends from Te Awa o te Atua ( Tarawera River) at Matatā across the central plateau of the North ...

from the Te Arawa waka. Ngāti Tūwharetoa owns the bed of the lake and its tributaries. They grant the public free access for recreational use.

History

Lake Taupō previously housed a

village known as Te Rapa near the springs of Maunga Kākaramea. It was covered in a landslide on 7 May 1846 which killed 60 people, including the iwi's chief Mananui Te Heuheu Tūkino II.

References

External links

Great Lake Taupō Official Visitor Information WebsiteTūrangi and Lake Taupō WebsiteLake Taupō
at the Waikato Regional Council
Lake Taupō area
at the Department of Conservation {{DEFAULTSORT:Taupō, Lake Taupō Volcanic Zone Calderas of New Zealand Taupō District VEI-8 volcanoes Supervolcanoes Volcanic crater lakes Lakes of Waikato * Waikato River