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IMPROVE School in Iceland

From June to July 2022 the activities in IMPROVE have
largely focused on Iceland.

The first IMPROVE network school was held on June 11-16 in Laugar,
Northern Iceland, about 30 km west of the Krafla volcano. The school
benefited from co-organization with the Nordic Volcanological Center
at the Institute of Earth Sciences of the University of Iceland, partner in
IMPROVE. Besides the recruited IMPROVE researchers, the school
was attended by other 15 students with nationalities from all over the
world coming from European Universities and Research Centers.
Theme of the school was the links between magmatic and
geothermal systems, including the geological, geophysical, and
geochemical methods employed for their investigation, and the
technical, environmental, and societal aspects related to exploitation
of geothermal energy. Two industries from Iceland with strong
involvement in geothermal energy contributed to the lessons and the
discussion, namely, Landsvirkjun (IMPROVE Partner) and Reykjavík
Energy.
The school included frontal lessons, practical exercises, poster
presentations by the students, and discussion sections; and it was
complemented by two field trips (1.5 days in total) aimed at
illustrating the magmatic and geothermal systems at Krafla, visiting
the Theystareykir geothermal power plant run by Landsvirkjun, and
exploring the geological setting of one of the most active areas in the
world across the tectonic plate boundary between America and
Eurasia.

Joe Carthy
“The IMPROVE school in Iceland was a great chance for me to get
exposed to the world of volcanology. There were interesting
lectures and there was a great dynamic between the speakers and
the participants. The highlight for me though was the opportunity to
explore beautiful Icelandic landscapes and have experts who could
explain how these awesome landscapes came to be.”

Thermal measurements of fumarolic emissions in Hverarönd

I M P R O V E m u l t i p a r a m e t r i c
experiment at Kraa, Iceland

Focused from June 18 to July 3, but extending well before and after
those dates, a multiparametric field experiment involving geophysical
and geochemical measurements and surveys has been conducted at
the Krafla caldera. This volcano offers unique opportunities, after
shallow magma was accidentally encountered at 2.1 km depth while
drilling in search of hot fluids during geothermal exploration. That
serendipitous encounter demonstrated limits in present-day
capabilities of imaging magmatic bodies close to the Earth surface,
with consequences that extend to volcanic hazard and risk analyses
at many volcanoes in the world. At the same time, it creates the unique
opportunity to attack those limits by developing more advanced
techniques at the only volcano in the world where the location of
magma is known from direct evidence.

The IMPROVE Krafla experiment involved substantial mobilization of
people and instruments, and close cooperation between the
academic and industrial Partners in the project. The conducted
campaign involves seismic, electric, geodetic, gravity, thermal, and
gas composition measurements, and represents one major element
for both research and training under IMPROVE.

An Open Communication Day was held, with the aim of describing the
on-going IMPROVE Krafla experiment to the nearby population and
civil authorities in the area.
GPS measurements inside the Krafla caldera