Question by Brenda H.: What are the advantages/disadvantages of living near a divergent boundary?
Specifically the fault in Reykjavik, Iceland. Thank you for any help.
Best answer:
Answer by Anonymouse
The main Mid-Atlantic ridge fault doesn’t go through ReykjavÃk. Well, I correct myself — there isn’t a single “main” fault; it’s really more like a series of jagged parallel ones. But anyway, ReykjavÃk is solidly on the North-American side.
As for advantages, well… first off, there’s some pure awesomeness aspects to it, which translates to tourism. For example, you can stand on two continents at once at Þingvellir, or dive in a super-clear freshwater lake between two continents, inside the rift, at Silfra. Google image search for pictures of Silfra — very impressive to say the least!
The main advantage has due to its position — which should be noted, is more than just an ordinary spot on the ridge (this one location is unusually prolific in terms of volcanic activity, and it’s really unknown as to why — there’s a hot spot but apparently no deep mantle plume feeding it) — is heat. Energy. At Perlan, for example, right in the heart of ReykjavÃk, they simply drilled a pipe 100 meters into the ground, added a choke at the top, drip water in, and viola — an artificial geyser. Over 1/4th of ReykjavÃk’s hot water supply (hot water is provided to every house, almost as cheap as cold — it’s used for cleaning, bathing, home and business heating, heating pools, heating greenhouses, all sorts of stuff) comes from right downtown.
Disadvantages? Well, um, we do kind of get a couple volcanoes. And by couple, I mean the whole country is volcanoes and has emitted 1/3rd of the world’s total lava in the past 500 years ;) So, for example, the main city on Vestmannaeyjar was mostly destroyed by an eruption in the 1970s, and it took the resources of pretty much the whole to keep the harbor safe. A fissure eruption from Laki in the late 1700s killed a ton of people, 70% of the country’s lifestock, and several million people worldwide. The last volcanic flood from Katla unleashed more water for a couple days than the Amazon river.
We get lots of earthquakes too, but generally quite minor. One did manage to knock a bottle of vegetable oil out of my kitchen cabinet and break on the floor, causing me to have a cartoon-style slide-whistle fall when I went to fix breakfast one time… so I guess that’s a disadvantage ;)
Beyond that, um…. you can’t build roads in a straight line across it? I don’t know, I guess that’s pretty much it.
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