2008 Iceland Earthquake
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2008 Iceland Earthquake
The 2008 Iceland earthquake was a doublet earthquake that struck on May 29 at 15:46 UTC in southwestern Iceland.. The recorded magnitudes of the two main quakes were 5.9 and 5.8 , respectively, giving a composite magnitude of 6.1 . There were no human fatalities, but 30 injuries were reported and a number of sheep were killed. The epicenter of the earthquake was between the towns of Hveragerði and Selfoss, about east-southeast of the capital, Reykjavík. It was the strongest earthquake to hit Iceland since the summer of 2000.. Characteristics Iceland straddles the mid-Atlantic ridge where the Eurasian and North-American tectonic plates move away from each other. Volcanic activity is common along such divergent boundaries but strong earthquakes are rare. In Iceland the ridge is somewhat off-set, creating two transform faults where plates move horizontally along each other. One is in the north of the country and one in the south; the strongest Icelandic earthquakes happen ...
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Fault (geology)
In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic forces, with the largest forming the boundaries between the plates, such as the megathrust faults of subduction zones or transform faults. Energy release associated with rapid movement on active faults is the cause of most earthquakes. Faults may also displace slowly, by aseismic creep. A ''fault plane'' is the plane that represents the fracture surface of a fault. A ''fault trace'' or ''fault line'' is a place where the fault can be seen or mapped on the surface. A fault trace is also the line commonly plotted on geologic maps to represent a fault. A ''fault zone'' is a cluster of parallel faults. However, the term is also used for the zone of crushed rock along a single fault. Prolonged motion along closely spaced faults can blur the ...
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Stokkseyri
Stokkseyri () is a small town in Southern Iceland, with a population of around 445. Overview Founded around 900 AD by the settler Hásteinn Atlason, it was an important fishing and trading village in previous times. The town is founded on the Great Þjórsá lava The Great Þjórsá Lava ( Icelandic: ''Þjórsárhraunið mikla'' ) is the largest lava flow in Iceland (by both area and volume) and the largest lava that is known to have erupted in a single eruption in the Holocene. It belongs to a group of lav .... The local school is Barnaskólinn á Eyrarbakka og Stokkseyri. The artistic experimental duo Jónsi & Alex wrote a song named after the town which appears on their album Riceboy Sleeps. The Knarraros lighthouse, which is a unique blend of functionalism and art nouveau style, is located about away. A famous inhabitant of Stokkseyri was Stokkseyrar-Dísa. It is home to the football team UMF Stokkseyri. References Fishing communities Populated places i ...
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Natural Disasters In Iceland
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena. The word ''nature'' is borrowed from the Old French ''nature'' and is derived from the Latin word ''natura'', or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and in ancient times, literally meant "birth". In ancient philosophy, ''natura'' is mostly used as the Latin translation of the Greek word ''physis'' (φύσις), which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics of plants, animals, and other features of the world to develop of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word φύσις by pre-Socr ...
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