Sam McColl, GNS Science was elected GSNZ President for a two-year term in November 2023.
2025 President's Tour
Martian monsters, giants, and recipes for disaster: Landslide curiosities, hazards, and a slippery future.
During the Presidential Lecture Sam will take you on a journey through the fascinating world of landslides, from the unbelievably large landslides on Mars to common problems in your backyard. The talk will explore why New Zealand has so many landslides, sharing a recipe for how to make a very landslide-prone country, and explaining why landslides have killed more people, and cost NZ more, than any other natural hazard. Some thoughts will be given to the big questions in landslide science, related to predicting when failures occur, and discuss the challenges in making projections for landslides in a warming world.
Details of the President's Lecture tour can be found on the National and Regional Events page.
GSNZ President 2023-2025
Dr Sam McColl (GNS Science)
Sam is a quantitative geomorphologist who applies cross-disciplinary approaches to solve problems spanning natural hazards, agriculture, engineering, and environment, with primary expertise in landslide processes and Quaternary geomorphology.
He is the Engineering Geology Team Leader at GNS Science and the current President of the Geoscience Society of New Zealand.
