(pensive music)
- [Narrator] These are some of the scenes
in the Reykjanes Peninsula of Iceland
after a volcanic eruption began expelling
lava in the region.
- This style of eruption differs somewhat from the kind
of popular culture explosions that you might see.
(explosions blasting)
(air whooshing)
- [Narrator] Here's why this eruption looks so different
and what threats it poses.
Iceland is home to more than 130 volcanoes
across more than 30 volcanic systems,
and right now, lava is erupting
out of the Svartsengi volcanic system
located in the Reykjanes Peninsula of southwest Iceland.
- In a traditional volcano, the volcanic material funnels
through a central vent, typically, like in those volcanoes
that you ideate in Hollywood where there is a mountain,
and a conical peak, and the summit,
and everything, like, flows out of the summit,
whether that's an ash plume
that explodes explosively into the sky,
or whether the lava comes up and out of the center
and, like, leaks down the side of the mountain.
Here, it's not like that.
- [Narrator] Instead, in this type of eruption,
known as a fissure eruption, lava basically oozes
from cracks in the ground,
and the type of lava typically involved in these two kinds
of eruptions also looks different.
An explosive eruption is often due to viscous, sticky magma
that doesn't flow easily, while a fissure eruption pushes
out fluid and runny magma that spreads across the landscape.
- The big danger with these is
that these lava flows can spread out quite a long way,
and obviously, as we're seeing in Iceland right now,
that poses a threat to both the infrastructure
in the region and people's lives.
- [Narrator] The eruption
from the Svartsengi volcanic system occurred near Grindavik,
an Icelandic fishing town.
The surrounding area is home to a major airport,
one of the country's most popular tourist attractions,
the Blue Lagoon, and a power plant that provides hot water
for the majority of the peninsula.
Eruptions in this part of Iceland have been increasing
steadily in recent years after a very long dormant period.
- This is just an area of Iceland that goes
through these periodic eras of on-and-off eruption activity
and then quiescence, so, like, around a millennia or so,
the peninsula is quiet.
You don't see volcanic activity, and then it starts up.
(lava roaring)
And then that era of volcanic activity lasts for centuries.
- [Narrator] Iceland sits on top of the Eurasian
and North American tectonic plates, making it a hotbed
of seismic and volcanic activity.
When the tectonic plates slip past one another,
earthquakes occur, and as the plates spread apart,
magma can leak up to the surface,
generating volcanic eruptions.
- The focus of sort of monitoring efforts
of volcanic systems is around trying to identify as early
as possible any precursory signals that sort of come
before the onset of an eruption.
And in instances like what we're seeing in Iceland,
these eruptions are typically heralded by these sort
of really high levels of seismic activity
to try and really tell us where there might be an eruption
and sort of where ongoing intrusions are going.
- [Narrator] It remains to be seen how the lava erupting
from the Svartsengi volcanic system will impact residents
in the surrounding area.
But the risk of volcanic activity also comes
with benefits for the Icelandic community.
- Every expert from Iceland who I spoke with was very proud
of the fact that the country uses their volcanoes
in a constructive way.
They harness geothermal energy from them
to generate electricity, and heat their water,
and heat their homes, and they don't need to buy oil
to do those things because they're exploiting
their volcanoes, basically.
But of course, the trade off there is,
in order to exploit them best, you have to be close to them,
and if you're close to them, eventually,
an eruption will threaten homes, threaten towns
and cities, and with risks come benefits.
(pensive music)