Nora Grenfell '12 reports on a 15-day field study trip to Iceland, led by Upson Chair for Public Discourse and Professor of Geosciences Barbara Tewksbury. More ...

During the last Ice Age, the whole country of Iceland was covered in a thick sheet of ice. From an aerial view, most of the island would have appeared to be in a state of frigid serenity. But under the ice, chaos ensued – massive volcanoes entombed in the ice erupted often, causing the overlying ice to melt. As the hot lava erupted into cold water, explosions occurred, depositing fragmented rock and glass with few lava flows. More ...