Photo Credit: M. Kosnik

Figure 1: Participants of the field course for 2002 included 4 staff, 1 graduate assistant, 1 Icelandic guide, 7 graduate students, and 15 undergrads including one math major, one biochem, one art history.

Photo Credit: M. Kosnik

Figures 2, 3, and 4: Subglacial basalt pillows (light brown, round to oblong blobs with radial cracks indicating cooling from the outside inwards). Dark brown basalt glass sand (hyaloclastite) surrounds the pillows and is weakly stratified. Outcrop is in the Stapafel quarry, Reykjanes.

Photo Credit: M. Kosnik

Figure 3

Photo Credit: A. Anderson

Figure 4

Photo Credit: A. Anderson

Figure 5: A group of lava flows exposed in a cliff face on Reykjanes in SW Iceland. The location is approximately on the rift that is the on-land continuation of the Mid Atlantic Ridge. The cliff is on the American plate, the students are standing on the Eurasian plate.

Photo Credit: A. Anderson

Figures 6 and 7: Lunch at Skogafoss, S. Iceland. Iceland's coasts are dotted with waterfalls reflecting the rapid rise of the land following deglaciation at the end of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago. Some of the waterfalls are marked by a rusty brown streak on the rock cliff and this reflects the origin of the water draining boggy areas where significant iron is in solution as the reduced Fe+2 form. This is quickly oxidized to the Fe+3 form upon contact with air and the insoluble oxidized iron precipitates as rusty iron oxide on the rocks. The rocks at Skogafoss are black to brown, not rusty, reflecting the local absence of bogs above the falls.

Photo Credit: A. Anderson

Figure 7

Photo Credit: A. Anderson

Figure 8: Plaque telling the mythological story of Skogafoss.

Photo Credit: A. Anderson

Figure 9: Examining the debris melting out of the Solheimajokull, S. Iceland. The valley glaciers extending towards the sea from Iceland's icesheets are in retreat and this return visit after our trip in 1996 revealed noticeable decrease in ice extent. Dark patches of ice in the upper part of the picture are covered with a pile of dark debris that is left behind by the melted ice. The dark patches stand higher than the surrounding white ice because a thick enough covering of rock shields the ice from penetrating radiation and this retards its melting. Boulders recently emerging from beneath the ice here are scratched in the direction of ice movement, but these cannot be seen in this picture.

Photo Credit: M. Kosnik

Figure 10: On the rim of one of the many craters that formed during the catastrophic eruption of 1783, known as the Laki eruption. This eruption produced more than 10 cubic kilometers of lava from a fissure that was 25 kilometers long. The eruption caused a haze over northern Europe for many months. Noone was killed by the lava, but crops were affected in Europe, and on Iceland the effect was devastating as the eruption occured in early spring so that grass growth was diminished, grass was also poisoned by fluorides which soften teeth, and full of sharp grit which wore down teeth to the point that cattle and sheep could no longer chew. Many animals died, and then the people, who depended on meat for food in the winter died of starvation, about 10 % of the total population of Iceland died in one year. The Laki eruption is the largest historic eruption (Katmai in 1912 is a close second).

Photo Credit: A. Anderson

Figure 11: The rough surface of the 1783 lava near the sea coast in S Iceland has been largely covered with a thick carpet of moss. The students discovered that the moss is very soft and contoured for comfortable napping.

Photo Credit: M. Kosnik

Figures 12 and 13 (these two adjoin: 13 left of 12 with 25% overlap): The glacial lake Jokulsarlon at the foot of the outlet glacier, Breidamerkurjokull, which is fed by Iceland's largest icecap, Vatnajokull in SE Iceland. Here the annual precipitation is greater than 4 meters! We were fortunate to have a sunny day. Such lakes are common at the margin of retreating glaciers, because the moving ice has dug out a substantial pit and deposited a moraine ridge dam. Later the ice margin melted back to its present position a few km inland from its previous position at the moraine. Now ice calves off the front of the glacier distributing icebergs into the lake.

Photo Credit: A. Anderson

Figure13

Photo Credit: A. Anderson

Figure 14: Icebergs in Jokullsarlon. We had much discussion about the rings on some of the icebergs. These are not visible in this picture. The point of discussion had to do with the above water level position of some the rings, indicating that as the icebergs melted they floated higher. This would require most melting to occur above water level, a puzzle in isostasy.

Photo Credit: M. Kosnik

Figure 15: An outcrop of coarsely crystalline gabbroic rock on the SE shore of Iceland. The east and western parts of Iceland are relatively old and deeply eroded exposing parts of Iceland's lower crust. Intrusions of gabbro and granitic rocks comprise about 10 % of Iceland and their origins are mysterious, but they likely were the roots of central volcanoes, long eroded away. Here at Austurhorn the granitic rocks have abundant included blobs of gabbroic rock and this has been interpreted to reveal that hot basaltic magma intruded the largely solid granitic magma and the heat of the basalt remobilized the granitic magma.

Photo Credit: A. Anderson

Figure 16: An intrusive basaltic sill exposed adjacent to the terminus of the Svinafelsjokull in S. Iceland. The light gray top and bottom of the sill are just above and below the top and bottom of the pen (lower left). Although the top and bottom of the sill are dense with only minor vesicles, the interior contains large cavities revealing that the gas pressure in the crystallizing sill exceeded the overburden pressure and lifted the overlying rocks to make room for the bubbles.

Photo Credit: A. Anderson

Figure 17: Some of the vesicles in the basalts at Svinafelsjokull are largely filled with various secondary minerals like zeolites, calcite and opal. In some of these filled vesicles there are subhorizontal structures that formed horizontally and their present tilt indicates that the rocks were tilted after the secondary minerals were deposited.

Photo Credit: M. Kosnik

Figure 18: Our guide points to one of the prominent light colored, rhyolitic ash beds produced in a historic eruption of Hekla. The ash drifted northwards and this location in N Iceland is about 250 kilometers away. Ash beds are now widely used in stratigraphy, especially in Pleistocene deposits and their study was begun in Iceland by the famous volcanologist Sigurdur Thorarinson.

Photo Credit: S. Peacock

Figure 19: Well, nothing more tempting than an icewater bath!