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Encyclopedia of Earthquake Engineering pp 1–15Cite as

Mechanisms of Earthquakes in Iceland

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Synonyms

Bookshelf faulting; Divergent plate boundaries; Hreppar microplate; Seismicity of Iceland; South Iceland Seismic Zone; Tjörnes fracture zone; Transform zones; Volcanic earthquakes

Introduction

Most of the seismicity of Iceland is due to processes related to the mid-Atlantic plate boundary that crosses the country (Fig. 1). These processes include transform faulting, rifting, dike injection, inflation and deflation of magma chambers, cooling of magma bodies, and volume changes of geothermal fluids (Einarsson 1986, 1991, 2008; Sigmundsson 2006).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Epicenters in Iceland and along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge system 1964–2004. Data are from the catalogs of the International Seismological Centre. Bathymetry is from General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (Modified from Sólnes et al. (2013) with help from Gunnar B. Guðmundsson at the Icelandic Meteorological Office)

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland

    Páll Einarsson

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  1. Páll Einarsson
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Correspondence to Páll Einarsson .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Risk & Uncertainty, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

    Michael Beer

  2. Institute for Risk and Uncertainty, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

    Ioannis A. Kougioumtzoglou

  3. Institute for Risk & Uncertainty, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

    Edoardo Patelli

  4. Institute for Risk & Uncertainty, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

    Ivan Siu-Kui Au

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Einarsson, P. (2014). Mechanisms of Earthquakes in Iceland. In: Beer, M., Kougioumtzoglou, I., Patelli, E., Au, IK. (eds) Encyclopedia of Earthquake Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36197-5_298-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36197-5_298-1

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