Sea-Floor Sunday #63: Bathymetric maps in vicinity of Eyjafjallajokull volcano

I’m using this week’s Sea-Floor Sunday to show a few simple maps of the region around the erupting Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland. I don’t have a photographic memory of the Earth’s surface so I always like to remind myself what a region’s topography/bathymetry looks like.

The first image (below) is a regional map centered on Iceland. I found it on this article on the mantleplumes.org site.

North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans and surrounding regions (credit: http://www.mantleplumes.org/Iceland2.html)

The next one is from GeoMapApp and simply shows the position of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Iceland, and Eyjafjallajokull.

basemap created in GeoMapApp

Here is a nice perspective bathymetric image (found here) showing the relationship of Iceland to Great Britain, the North Sea, and Scandinavia.

Perspective bathymetric image of the Nordic Seas (credit: http://folk.uio.no/bjorng/tidevannsmodeller/tidemod.html)

While searching for images I came across a great site from Tobias Weisenberger that, among many other topics, included a page on the geology of Iceland. If you want to learn more about the origin and evolution of this area I recommend it. The image below shows the bathymetry in relation to the age of the Iceland plume (yellow dots in millions of years) and the active rift zones (red lines).

Bathymetry around Iceland, active rift zones, and age of Iceland plume (credit: http://www.tobias-weisenberger.de/6Iceland.html)

Although not a bathymetric image I figured I’d throw in this simplified geologic map (also from Weisenberger’s site). Note location of Eyjafjallajokull near the southern tip of the island.

credit: http://www.tobias-weisenberger.de/6Iceland.html

As I mentioned in my post on Friday (showing a video of a jökulhlaup) check out the Eruptions blog and The Volcanism Blog for continuing coverage of this geologic event.