active geyser, Steamboat Geyser in Yellowstone National Park), and the Orakeikorako Geyser, which on occasion could erupt up to 55 metres, and which gave the whole region its name. Orakei Korako today The lowest terrace at Orakei Korako is the jade-green Emerald Terrace, the largest of its kind in New Zealand since the presumed destruction of the famed Pink and White Terraces in the Mount Tarawera eruption of 1886. However, researchers recently rediscovered the Pink and White Terrace locations. In peak wet conditions up to 20 million litres of silica-enriched water per day may flow over the terrace and into Lake Ohakuri. The Emerald Terrace continues 35 metres under the lake, which was formed for hydropower generation in 1961. This raised the Waikato River level by 18 metres at Orakei Korako, flooding approximately 200 alkaline hot springs and 70 geysers (or two-thirds of the active thermal area). Some of these thermal features still discharge, with their presence evident as gas bubbles rising from the vents in the lake bed. Despite the loss of so many of its thermal features under the artificial lake, Orakei Korako remains the largest geyser field in New Zealand, with up to 35 active geysers. The most famous of these is the Diamond Geyser, whose unpredictable eruptions can last from a few minutes to many hours, ejecting boiling water as high as nine metres. The three terraces above the lakeside Emerald Terrace are great fault scarps formed by an earthquake in 131 AD, around the time when Lake Taupō (a supervolcano) was last erupting. They are mostly covered in hot water algae, or cyanobacteria, which grows in temperatures between 35–59 degrees Celsius (95-138.2 degree fahrenheit), the colours dependent on the species, with green, yellow and black the most common. At the base of the two lower terraces – named Rainbow and Cascade Terraces – are several small geysers, including the intermittently active Sapphire Geyser, and the Hochstetter Pool (named after Austrian pioneer geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter, who visited the area in 1859), which erupted in November 1954 and played as a geyser until mid-1955, ceasing suddenly after swarms of subterranean earthquakes. The third and largest great fault scarp in the valley is called the Golden Fleece Terrace (named Te Kapua by the Māori people, meaning "The Cloud"), which is five metres high and 40 metres long, with a beautiful white crystal-like sinter coating. At the base