The original intent of this RAPID proposal was to fund travel and field expenses for the immediate observation and data collection along the Jökulsá á Fjöllum channel in the event of a jökulhlaup occurrence due to significant sub-glacial magmatic activity beneath the westernmost lobe of Vatnajökull Glacier (Dyngjujökull - Bárðarbunga caldera), Iceland.  However, the magmatic activity decreased in the spring of 2015 and the revised goals were to collect baseline water chemistry samples, conduct additional surficial geomorphological mapping, and collect rock samples in order to age date the sequence of catastrophic floods that occurred along the channel throughout the Holocene.

This grant provided training opportunities for two students by involving them in all aspects of the research.  One undergraduate student from Georgetown University, and one graduate student from the University of Texas – Austin, assisted in the field with enthusiasm and skill.  Each student was given specific tasks and shared responsibilities for sample and data collection, logistics planning and support, and communications with our international hosts in Iceland.  The project also provided the faculty members the opportunity to work as an integrated collaborative team.  After the field season, students at the University of Texas – Austin campus analyzed the water samples, providing them with training in water chemistry methods.  Additionally, the rock drift samples were analyzed, enabling the PI to model and produce exposure ages in order to record their depositional history.

The eventual impact of this project is its contribution to the knowledge of the principal discipline in a number of ways:

1. Adding to the knowledge of the paleo-flood history along the Jökulsá á Fjöllum channel by providing ages of these floods and outlining their inundation heights
2. Linking each paleo-flood to the climate and volcanic history throughout the Holocene
3. Providing a big-picture understanding of the climate change history in the Holocene and its impact on Iceland
4. Providing essential data to cosmogenic radionuclide age dating literature for further calibration of atmospheric and 36CL production rates
5. Further define and calibrate catastrophic flood models applied to other planetary bodies
6. Understand baseline conditions of water chemistry in order to provide valuable information for potentially forecasting catastrophic flood events emanating from the glacier-volcano interface.  Additionally, this will provide an understanding of the water chemistry variations across this region of Iceland.
7. Provides data to make more informed decisions about natural hazards related to jökulhlaup events such as lahars, landslides, debris flows, avalanches, catastrophic floods, and water contamination.

Finally, we hope that our data can be used in land use and hazard mitigation planning.  The field data and water chemistry that we collected could be used by land-use and hazard mitigation teams to better understand how to make best use of lands and natural resources in the path of such floods and how to mitigate these hazards.  Through public outreach, this information may provide citizens a better understanding of the risks and what to expect if such an event were to occur.

Last Modified: 11/30/2016
Modified by: Douglas A Howard