Mid Atlantic Ridge In Iceland

Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Iceland
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) is a submarine ridge located along the floor of the Atlantic Body of water, which wraps around the globe for more than 65,000 km, like the seam of a baseball. It is the longest and the nearly all-encompassing chain of mountains on world, but being located underwater, more xc% of this mountain range remains hidden from view. There are but a few places on earth, where it juts out of the surface of the ocean, in the form of a few islands, one of which is Iceland.

Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Iceland (3)

Republic of iceland represents the largest portion of the MAR exposed above sea level. Formed from volcanic eruptions on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, nearly 24 million years ago, information technology is one of the few places where you lot can stand on the ridge on dry land. This makes Iceland very special and a popular place for geologists and scientists. The MAR is geologically meaning considering it marks the boundary where the Northward American and Eurasian tectonic plates run across and divide. Volcanic eruptions at this boundary create new ocean flooring and at the same time button the 2 tectonic plates autonomously at rates of 1 cm to 20 cm per year—a procedure known as ocean-floor spreading. Equally oceanic plates motion apart, rock melts and wells up from tens of kilometres deep, producing enormous volcanic eruptions of basalt, and building the longest concatenation of volcanoes in the earth.

The place where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is all-time visible is at Thingvellir National Park, in due south-western Iceland. The continental drift betwixt the North American and Eurasian plates tin be conspicuously seen in the cracks or faults which traverse the region, the largest one—Almannagjá—being a veritable canyon.

Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Iceland (2)
The department of the ridge that includes the island of Iceland is known as the Reykjanes Ridge. The ridge is spreading at an average rate of most 2.v cm per year. Over the past 10,000 years, the Thingvellir Rift Valley has widened by 230 ft or 70 m and sunk by 131 ft or forty m. Non just is the mid-ocean ridge changing the geography of Iceland, information technology'south also responsible for the volcanic activity which created the island. As the two tectonic plates shift, fissures periodically form in the crust that allow molten rock from hugger-mugger to surface equally lava, creating Iceland'southward many volcanoes. Republic of iceland is ane of the nearly geologically active places on world with more than than 15 volcanoes that have erupted in the final century.