Near the southern end of Lake Mývatn, astride the Mid-Atlantic Rift in northern Iceland, lies a field of “pseudocraters” that result from steam explosions beneath a fresh lava flow. Put on your head-net and join us to check it out!
Today, let’s journey to Iceland, to a bit northwest of Reykjavík. This is a view from the top of the Grábrók cinder cone, across the valley to the east. With very few exceptions, Iceland is a big pile of basalt, and that shows through in the walls of this valley, which display a stack of … Read more
A basalt flow in Iceland shows both enticing pahoehoe and fractures with a Y-shaped intersection pattern. Comparisons to bread loaves and east Africa suggest a reason why.
What makes an Icelandic cinder cone even better? A coating of fuzzy lichens, perhaps…
At the Volcano Museum in Stykkishólmur, I learned that Iceland has fossils. Specifically, they have a display of bivalve (clam) fossils there, and when I asked where to find them, I was directed to a point further east on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula. The next day, I set off to find them. Here was what I … Read more
Iceland does basalt really, really well. But there are a few non-basaltic igneous rocks to be found there, too. One of them is a green ignimbrite (pyroclastic conglomerate) that crops out in coastal Berufjörður, eastern Iceland. Check it out!
Today, I offer up a few photos and some video from the Hverir geothermal area on the east side of Mývatn National Park in Iceland – a rift zone astride the central Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and thus an area where you would expect to see a high heat flow through the crust. Heat interacting with meteoric … Read more
Based on this photo, what do you think Stađarbjargavík might have to offer? If you guessed columnar jointing in basalt, you’d be right! Looking down the fjord, south of Hofsós (in Iceland): The place is basically a series of miniature Giant’s Causeways, full of unpopulated exemplars of cooling columns! Little coves separate the small peninsulas, … Read more
Time is short these days, but I know you hanker for amazing geology. How about some pillow basalts from the Snæfellsnes* Peninsula, far western Iceland? Note the cm-demarcated pencil for scale. See if you can find it in the GigaPan version below: Link Handheld GigaPan by Callan Bentley, stitched with Microsoft ICE _________________________ * “Snay … Read more
Two 3D models for you today, both produced by my student Marissa Dudek, using photo sets I gathered in Iceland: Photoscan model by Marissa Dudek (That one has paleomag holes drilled into it!) Photoscan model by Marissa Dudek (That one I’m particularly pleased with. Given the circumstances of image acquisition, this is a very good … Read more
While soaking at some fine outdoor hot springs in southern Iceland (near Höfn) last week, I spied a Friday fold on the rock wall above the hot pots: Iceland is not a place where we would expect to find ductile folds in already-lithified rocks, so I’m guessing that these are folds related to flow in … Read more
Last week, I was in Iceland, driving around the country’s Ring Road and checking out its amazing geology with my family. We had a great time in particular exploring in the Lake Mývatn region, on the country’s subaerial expression of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Lake Mývatn itself is in a rift basin, peppered with a great … Read more
I think this one of the most fascinating batches of sand we’ve yet had the pleasure of macro-GigaPanning: link So much igneous goodness hidden in those grains, collected from a beach on the south of Iceland… The image was made by Robin Rohrback-Schiavone (my student at NOVA) as part of the Mid-Atlantic Geo-Image Collection (M.A.G.I.C.). … Read more
Searching for Peter Luffi’s latest Where On Google Earth? challenge, I found myself touring Iceland last week. While I didn’t find the strange comet-shaped feature he posted, I did find this: And zooming in a bit, to the high-contrast area in the center: This appears to be volcanic ash layers distorted by glacial flow and … Read more
Quite appropriately, Glacial Till won the new the latest edition of “Where on (Google) Earth?”, hosted here yesterday. The location I picked is the subject of a new paper by Mark Johnson and colleagues appears in the current issue of Geology (October 2010). It shows a place in Iceland where a piedmont-style outlet glacier called … Read more
My friend Barry R., now residing in PostDocVille, Denmark, took a trip to Iceland last week to check out the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull. Unfortunately, by the time he got to the volcano, it was no longer spouting lava, but the scene is dramatic regardless. You can sample some of his photos below, or see the … Read more