Iceland's Bridge Between Continents: False Advertising? Geologist Weighs In 

If the sun went super crazy, would that make some active volcanoes erupt?

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Thanks Shawn. Isn't there also at least one micro plate in that system?

Agreed. Just poking a little nit-picky fun, geology style.

@@shawnwillsey I love your channel Shawn! Sometimes you are a little too nice though. The signs are clearly inaccurate and you should just call a spade a spade.

Roughly, very roughly “At Reykjavík towards the northern end of this peninsula the relative movement of the North American Plate away from the Eurasian Plate can be modelled as 1.883 cm/year (0.741 in/year), but less than 60% of this divergence is accommodated by tectonic structures just to the immediate east of Reykjavík, with most of the rest being absorbed by tectonic structures in the south-east of Iceland.” “In southern Iceland, the block located along the plate boundary is identified as a microplate, and is named the Hreppar block or Hreppar microplate.: 53  Its current independent motion to the major plates was confirmed by GPS measurement.: 52  Internal block deformation is negligible since it has no significant evidence of active deformation, earthquakes or volcanism and a propagating rift origin from the Eastern volcanic zone (EVZ) is proposed with the Western volcanic zone (WVZ) being the receding rift.” “Hreppar Microplate - Small tectonic plate in south Iceland, between the Eurasian Plate and the North American Plate” So apparently the bridge does go “from” the NA plate, but it’s still sort of the NA side and the plate on the other side of the rift ain’t exactly the Eurasian plate anymore. Then we get into definition semantics. If you head to central Iceland the plate boundaries get wider and even more difficult to define. It’s funny how the best popular examples of the North Atlantic rift are the most difficult areas to define as such geologically. If you want to see a good rift valley with lots of exotic features travel south from Nazret to Shashemen along the Somali plate boundary. This is part of the rift zone that gave rise to so many “human”. fossil discoveries as well as a number of land locked alkaline lakes. This area is spreading apart about half a centimeter a year. “The rift floor is cut by a series of smaller en echelon, right-stepping, rift basins of Quaternary to recent age. These basins are about 20 kilometres (12 mi) wide and 60 kilometres (37 mi) long. In the northern part of the rift, extension within the valley is now thought to be mainly along these faulted and magmatically active segments.” Some ancient prophets have even been known to have found their god(s) in these high places🤣 “These segments are considered to be developing mid ocean ridge spreading centers.” And that’s the point.

As a geologist, I am not at all inclined to let them have this. I would have included what Shawn summarized about the rift zone. I am not inclined to tolerate marketing simplifications.

@@shawnwillsey You pointed out the bigger land 'bridge' that plugs the hole between the plates :) The little bridge is the disney land version :) I live near the San Andres fault in the SF Bay area, so often travel to the pacific plate.

I agree. It was just fun to be a little nit picky here, geology style.

I don't see why they can't cater to both with mindsets with a designated trail going from one end to the other of the rift graben basin. Lazy tourists get their little bridge exhibit more enterprising folks get a longer more nuanced hike to let them feel smug over the bridge only folks. ;)

That would be a really good idea.

​​@@Dragrath1 "lazy" tourists? So 15% of people are not disabled, and in NEED of accessible access, nope, just "lazy"! How revealing. Thankfully, Icelandic people aren't bigots or "nit-pickers", they want to share with all.

I see 👀 what you did there 😂😂🎉😂😂

Years ago I visited Yosemite National Park. There were demonstration cars showing what a bear can do to your car. Don't leave tasty things in your car. Next to the demonstration car was a parked late-model van that had been destroyed the night before by one bear who ripped open one side of the van, ate the peach that had been left in the back seat, and tore open the other side door to exit. Not covered by insurance because it's a Federal crime to leave food in your car in Yosemite.

That is a good analogy it also makes you somewhat hungry. Also its funny to think of the continents being peanuts lol.

Try freezing the snickers bar first before pulling it apart.

Yes, now I am craving a Snickers! Thanks a lot.

Excellent analogy. And now I want a Snickers bar too!

​@@tuboe777 yum, Snickers icecream bars. Those things are lethal good.

Agreed.

Same for me, pouring and super windy. This was a nice follow-up. We crossed the bridge and ran back to the car.

Ha! We were delayed one day which would have been in exactly that type of weather.

@@shawnwillsey I'll be back in Iceland in a week or so, my 3rd time. Hope I see the volcano. Going up to Snaefellenes, too.

Krafla is also part of the Mid Atlantic Ridge with a more significant hot spot and suspected continental contamination signature believed to be due to a section of Laurasia being entrained within the hotspot that drove Laurasia to break up between 60 and 58 Ma. That at least is one model for why it is thought that only the Northeastern portions of Iceland are enriched in more silica rich rhyolitic magmas based on our knowledge that the North Atlantic Large Igneous Province started as a continental flood basalt much like the CAMP(Central Atlantic Magmatic Province responsible for breaking up Pangaea of the Kerguelen island plateau Large Igneous Province responsible for the break up of Gondwana. Point is that is a section of the Mid Atlantic Ridge ridge albeit one with a more explosive siliceous history of eruptive activity which notably has a Reykjanes Peninsula like extensional episode that lasted from 1975 to 1984 so if a monitoring campaign was set p in the 1960's that would have provided some good data (though more such rebar stakes would be ideal to see how the area stretches' out.

Sounds like fun, but if the rebar was just in the ground, not the bedrock, it would be hard to distinguish any tectonic motion from frost heaving. (I live in an area where too much of the municipal budget has to go to road repairs during the non-frozen season.) 😊

@@b.a.erlebacher1139i suspect for many areas of iceland the ground is the bedrock

I would LOVE to see this someday.

@@shawnwillsey You should visit Kenya sometime. You can describe the geology of the Rift Valley. The people are great. It is the one nation in Africa where they aren't killing each other in a local civil war. While in Nairobi they are bilingual, speaking Swahili and English, there are about 40 local languages in the rest of the country and they use English as the universal language. They drive on the left side like Australia and New Zealand. They use feet and inches for up close and personal with kilometers on the road signs, just like other Commonwealth nations. We were there in January and the temps were 70's and 80's. Difficulty for the local civil engineering, such as the new railroad being built by the Chinese and the paved highways for rubber tired vehicles, is that sometimes there is an earthquake and Rift Valley widens by a foot all at once. If you work on a road crew in Kenya you won't have to worry about being laid off and unemployed!

Stałam,czułam moc oraz że już jestem w USA,a,ja z Polski,gdy nawet wiz nam odmawiali.

For sure.

​@@user-ph7lt7wu6k Hey, you were in Canada and Mexico and a bit of Siberia and even part of northern Japan, too!

Yes, just further inland.

Þingvellir is on the boundary of the North American plate and the Hreppafleki micro-plate. The Eurasian plate is quite a bit far away to the east.

The reason Iceland rises from the ocean compared to the rest of the Mid Atlantic Ridge is due the volcanic hotspot situated underneath it in the southeast. So Iceland won't split apart but rather keep on becoming elongated. 16 million years ago the east and west fjords were much closer together. Two scenarios can happen in the far flung future, either the mid atlantic tectonic rift will drift away from the hot spot some time in the far future causing the island to split apart or we will see the end of the "Wilson cycle" and the atlantic ocean will start to close again and Iceland will be crushed into the european/north american continents. Both scenarios are of course millions of years in the future.

As @E1R1KUR said the hotspot is the reason the boundary here is exposed above water if you look at the topographic maps its a giant bulge along the mid ocean ridge where the abnormally warm mantle is uplifted the material is also thicker as there are regionally more eruptions in the area but like other hotspots i.e. the Hawaiian emperor seamount chain the heavy basalt piles that result are denser than the land is still sinking into the sea as it leaves the upwelling zone where the mantle is countering the negative buoyancy. There are a few older bits of ancient Iceland which manage to stick up out of the water the most notable being the Faroe islands which are effectively a peak of the larger Eurasian side of Iceland sticking up above the waves but the bulk of the province has sunk into the North Atlantic ocean which formed 58 Ma with the initiation of the modern Icelandic hot spot splitting Greenland from Eurasia. Also as for the future of Iceland there is growing evidence seismic tomography and igneous petrology and age dating of the Siletzia and Yakutat terranes and the Yellow stone hot spot track that the Yellowstone hotspot was prior to being overridden by North America a comparable mid ocean ridge emplaced hot spot. Notably the Large Igneous Province in question is split into two major pieces today the Siletzia terrain which is along the Pacific Northwest in parts of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia that has been accreted to North America and the Yakutat terrain which is in the process of being simultaneously accreted and subducted in the Aleutian subduction zone up in Alaska as an overthickened part of the Pacific slab too thick to all subduct away. This is probably the closest direct analog of what a plate override of Iceland will eventually look like with Siletzia primarily being the Farallon half of the LIP and Yakutat the Pacific half. Its a bit more complicated since Siletzia was much hotter when it was accreted alongside the Yellowstone hotspot which formed it simultaneously cutting off the Pacific half from its magmatic source and there is also complications from the deep (solid) mantle upwelling discontinuity that is the East Pacific Rise appearing to still be active and persist beneath the North American continent with the Basin and Rage Province and Colorado plateau regions likely being the result of continued activity of this divergent boundary starting to break apart the North American Craton around 16-17 Ma. Iceland and the Mid Atlantic ridge have a similar sold mantle upwelling discontinuity but it isn't as active as the East Pacific Rise counterpart. In fact there is evidence that the rate of sea floor spreading along the Mid Atlantic Ridge is slowing down while the East Pacific Rise is speeding up which along with nascent Subduction zones spreading into the Atlantic along t he coast of Gibraltar along side the young Sandwich island arc and the Caribbean is building up the case that the Atlantic ocean is transitioning into the declining stage of its associated Wilson Cycle where subduction zones begin to form and close the ocean basin.

You described all of that as though you witnessed it all. I am impressed and humbled. Wouldn’t it be fair to be able to witness the future progression of this planet?

@@Dragrath1 Thank you! I do have grounding (thanks to Professor Zentner) on Siletzia etc. Very much appreciated. Have a better visual in my head now.

Neither. Or both. As Shawn explained, there is no one crack; it's more like a swarm of cracks fairly closely aligned with each other and the general trend of the Mid Atlantic Ridge/plate boundary.

@@richarddavies7419 thak you for this, make sens sins it is part of the mid atlantic ridge

Tight schedule on this day. Normally I would.

@@shawnwillsey You actually mean that don't you lol

Indeed. The whole valley where Thingvellir lies is the boundary there.

Yes and no, Iceland is a Large Igneous province or rather the largest and only still active piece of the North Atlantic Large Igneous province but not all hot spot LIP's are along divergent plate boundaries. In fact in a number of cases Iceland being one of the younger such examples second to the African rift valley complex the hot spot is largely responsible for the existence of that divergent boundary in the first place as the NALIP broke apart or was involved in the break up of Laurasia between 60 to 58 Ma.

@@Dragrath1 Thank you Dragrath, it seems obvious now that you've pointed it out.

Agreed