On March 19, 2021, Mount Fagradalsfjall on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland erupted for the first time in 781 years. It continued to spew lava for six months straight before finally stopping on September 18.
According to the Icelandic Tourist Board, more than 350,000 people came to see the lava flow as it was easy to access. Many were also interested in what was underneath Earth’s surface.
On the very first day of the eruption, a helicopter flew to the volcano and gathered some samples of the magma, or underground lava. According to Nature Communications, researchers tested the lava samples, and found out that it was full of crystals.
“We have a really detailed record of the different types of composition that we can find in the mantle now, and it must be very heterogeneous, very variable,” said Frances Deegan, a volcanologist at Uppsala University in Sweden.
Researchers were all scrambling for more samples as the eruption of Fagradalsfjall is actually quite rare. The lava from the volcano was primitive, meaning it came right from Earth’s mantle.
The volcano exists at the fault lines between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, and both plates are constantly pulling and pushing against each other.
Geological records show that the periodic volcanic activity occurs about every thousand years, and this most recent explosion was foreshadowed by more than a year of earthquakes.
Dr. Deegan and her collaborator, Ilya Bindeman, a geochemist at the University of Oregon, worked with other researchers on the ground at Fagradalsfjall to analyze the lava. They found that the chemicals inside the lava were varied over time, which suggests that many different parts of the mantle combined during the eruption. They also discovered that the oxygen isotopes were virtually identical across these lava samples. This supports the long standing theory about the source of Iceland’s mysteriously low levels of oxygen-18, an isotope often found in volcanic rock.
“These are very exciting times,” said Dr. Olafur Flovenz, director of the Iceland GeoSurvey, who started studying Icelandic volcanoes in 1973. “I had never had the hope that I would live to see this unrest and eruptions on this peninsula. This has been extremely interesting for the geosciences community.”
Link to articles:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/science/volcano-fagradalsfjall-mantle-magma.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/20/iceland-volcanic-eruption-outside-reykjavik-officially-over
According to the Icelandic Tourist Board, more than 350,000 people came to see the lava flow as it was easy to access. Many were also interested in what was underneath Earth’s surface.
On the very first day of the eruption, a helicopter flew to the volcano and gathered some samples of the magma, or underground lava. According to Nature Communications, researchers tested the lava samples, and found out that it was full of crystals.
“We have a really detailed record of the different types of composition that we can find in the mantle now, and it must be very heterogeneous, very variable,” said Frances Deegan, a volcanologist at Uppsala University in Sweden.
Researchers were all scrambling for more samples as the eruption of Fagradalsfjall is actually quite rare. The lava from the volcano was primitive, meaning it came right from Earth’s mantle.
The volcano exists at the fault lines between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, and both plates are constantly pulling and pushing against each other.
Geological records show that the periodic volcanic activity occurs about every thousand years, and this most recent explosion was foreshadowed by more than a year of earthquakes.
Dr. Deegan and her collaborator, Ilya Bindeman, a geochemist at the University of Oregon, worked with other researchers on the ground at Fagradalsfjall to analyze the lava. They found that the chemicals inside the lava were varied over time, which suggests that many different parts of the mantle combined during the eruption. They also discovered that the oxygen isotopes were virtually identical across these lava samples. This supports the long standing theory about the source of Iceland’s mysteriously low levels of oxygen-18, an isotope often found in volcanic rock.
“These are very exciting times,” said Dr. Olafur Flovenz, director of the Iceland GeoSurvey, who started studying Icelandic volcanoes in 1973. “I had never had the hope that I would live to see this unrest and eruptions on this peninsula. This has been extremely interesting for the geosciences community.”
Link to articles:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/science/volcano-fagradalsfjall-mantle-magma.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/20/iceland-volcanic-eruption-outside-reykjavik-officially-over
