Photographs of active glaciovolcanism in Iceland over the last three decades - use in research and sharing via EPOS

 Some of the most active volcanoes in Iceland are ice-covered due to the northerly latitude of the island.  The last three decades have been very active, with six eruptions occurring in glaciers.  These were the Gjálp eruption of 1996, Grímsvötn in 1998, 2004 and 2011, Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, and accompanying the large Holuhraun eruption in 2014-15, and the associated subsidence of the Bárðarbunga caldera a few very minor eruptions occurred under the glacier.  A large number of photos of these events provide unique documentation of glaciovolcanism.   At the Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Iceland, monitoring of volcanic eruptions, mostly from aircraft, has been done in a systematic way since 1996.  The photos from the eruptions of Gjálp in 1996 and Grímsvötn in 1998 were taken on film and exist as slides. From 2000 onwards, photos are mostly digital. EPOS (European Plate Observing System) is a multidisciplinary, distributed research infrastructure that facilitates the integrated use of data, data products, and facilities from the solid Earth science community in Europe. Under EPOS, an Icelandic infrastructure project, EPOS-Iceland, has as one of its aims to create a data base of photos from eruptions in Iceland. This project is led by the Iceland Meteorological Office, with participation of the Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Iceland, the Iceland GeoSurvey (ISOR) and the Natural Science Institute of Iceland.  The images will include detailed metadata, including the relevant data on event, location, time, type of event and phenomena observed. The EPOS data bases are set up using the FARE principle and the images should therefore be available for future research by those interested in exploiting the data.  The photos used display large scale ice cauldron formation under thick ice (Gjálp 1996), major uplift of a subglacial lake in Grímsvötn caldera associated with this eruption and a major jökuhlaup carrying large ice bergs and destroying bridges.  In the Grímsvötn eruptions (1998, 2004 and 2011) large ice cauldrons with vertical walls developed around the eruption sites and large scale tephra deposition occurred.  In the Eyjafjallajökull eruption (2010), both ice cauldron formation and the propagation of a subglacial lava is documented.  During Bárðarbunga-Holuhraun in 2014-15, the photos document subtle signs of very small eruptions and the 65 m subsidence of the Bárðarbunga caldera, filled with 700-800 m of ice.