User:Jmc/sandbox

Evidence of continued existence
The terraces were long thought to have been destroyed in the 1886 eruption. However, in February 2011, a team including researchers from GNS Science, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory, and Waikato University were mapping the lake floor when they reported discovering part of the Pink Terraces. The lowest two tiers of the terraces were reported found at 60 metres (200 ft) deep. A part of the White Terraces was also reported as rediscovered in June 2011..

The 2011 GNS claims of rediscovery were challenged by Bill Keir, a freelance researcher, who calculated that the 'rediscovered' structures were not where the terraces had been before the eruption. Specifically, the then newly discovered structures were 50–60 metres (160–200 ft) under the lake surface, but the historic terraces were expected to be as little as 10 metres (33 ft) under, and "could not be more than 40 metres (130 ft) below the surface". Keir speculated that the structures discovered by the GNS team were prehistoric terraces, never before seen by humans; or perhaps step-shaped objects created by the eruption. Keir's speculations were rebutted in detail by Cornel de Ronde, Principal Scientist, GNS Science.

The GNS team went back in 2012, and again in February 2014, to photograph the remains. When their work was published in 2016 in the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, they drew back from earlier claims and reported the terraces were likely destroyed. In 2017 an article by Bill Keir in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand stated that the terraces could not have survived intact.

In 2010, Sascha Nolden discovered Hochstetter's archive in Basel, Switzerland, and began progressively cataloging and publishing it. The archive includes Hochstetter's field diaries which contain the raw data from his compass survey of Lake Rotomahana and the Pink and White Terraces. These diaries include bearings which, when reverse-engineered, delivered the geographical coordinates of the Pink and White Terraces' locations. The Hochstetter diaries have been published in two research papers by Bunn and Nolden. This research led Bunn and Nolden to report that, contrary to the prevailing belief, the Pink and White Terraces were not submerged beneath Lake Rotomahana: they are instead buried 10 to 15 metres (33 to 49 ft) underground along the shoreline, based on coordinates in an article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and could potentially be excavated and restored to public view. Any such excavation, however, would need the permission of the Māori tribe which owns the land. Bunn released a summary and supporting image gallery of the new 2018 findings. Later, he explained the release of the new findings.

As of March 2018, Tūhourangi Tribal Authority chairman Alan Skipworth was not yet convinced by Bunn and Nolden's claims, calling press reports that the Pink and White Terraces had been rediscovered "premature".

An article written by Bunn, Davies and Stewart, published in 2018, uses a novel "field of view" approach to navigate to the Pink and White Terraces locations. This draws on unpublished photography from Hochstetter's 1859 expedition, as well as his diary data.

A review article by de Ronde, Caratori Tontini, and Keam about the location of the Pink and White Terraces was published in 2018. The article concluded "… various lines of geological and geophysical evidence do not support the location of the Pink and White Terraces as suggested by Bunn & Nolden (2016)." and "… possible Pink Terrace tiers first reported by de Ronde, Fornari et al. (2016) are located exactly where we believe they should lie after fitting the Keam (2016) pre-eruption outline map of Lake Rotomahana to our high-resolution bathymetric map." The article also states that the data analysis confirms that the White Terraces would have been destroyed. As of 2023 Bunn has not accepted this.