Iceland’s glaciers and features they create
Like other high-latitude locations on Earth, glaciers in Iceland have advanced and retreated many times during the past 2.5 million years, since we've been in a global Ice Age. The last glacial maximum was about 20,000 years ago, when ice completely covered the island and extended up to 200 km (120 miles) beyond the coastline to cover the marine shelf....
Volcanoes galore in Iceland
Iceland's "double whammy" position overlying both a mid-ocean ridge and a mantle hot spot produces vast outpourings of lava that have built the island up from the seafloor. Because of the hot spot, the volume of erupted material is about 10 times that found at normal mid-ocean locations that don't coincide with hot spots. In this post, I'll show some...
Standing between tectonic plates in Iceland
Sitting in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean is the island country of Iceland. Visiting Iceland is on pretty much every geologist's "bucket list" because of its unique above-water position on a plate boundary where two plates are moving apart from each other (i.e., diverging). During a trip there with other geologists in July, I explored the landscapes of...
About the Blogger
Karen (here with Mt. Shasta in background) is a geology professor emerita who aims to provide a "pocket geologist" for world travelers. Follow the blog to explore the landscapes of our planet and figure out what causes them to look the way they do.