Analogs of Ice and Fire: Conducting Fieldwork in the Icelandic Highlands to Inform Volcanic Interpretations on Mars and Instrument Development for Europa

In the summer of 2018 the Goddard Instrument Field Team led an expedition to the Icelandic Highlands. Fieldwork in this region is challenging due to its remoteness, weather and terrain. However, geologically it provides excellent analogs to a range of planetary environments. The 2014-2015 Holuhraun eruption of Bárðarbunga is the largest flood lava erupted in Iceland in 230 years, and is comparable in morphology to fissure-fed lava flows on Mars. In addition, the juxtaposition of hydrothermal activity from Kverkfjöll Volcano and the overlying Vatnajokull Ice Sheet provides an analog for thermal plumes heating the surface of Europa. To overcome the logistical challenges (see N. Whelley this meeting), two teams (Fire and Ice) with different science goals joined together to complete two complicated field studies.

Team Ice used a suite of field portable instruments (see Nixon et al., this meeting) and collected rock, water, and ice samples to investigate the chemistry, mineralogy, and biology in and around hydrothermal-glacial interaction sites near Kverkfjöll Volcano. This work informs science strategies for future "Icy-World" missions and an understanding of the diversity of habitable environments at a volcanism-cryosphere intersection, a location with high astrological potential.

Team Fire returned to the juvenile vent and flows associated with the Holuhraun eruption of Bárðarbunga, following their 2015 and 2016 field seasons. This team collected topographic data to study the unique lava facies observable in the field and to quantify the onset of erosion of the "spatter-canyon" vent area (see Richardson et al., this meeting). Topographic analysis, comparing elevation models from 2015, 2016, and 2018, reveals that erosion of slopes and large (>1 m) blocks has already begun. In addition, the 2018 work at Holuhraun includes the use of a suite of field portable instruments and sampling chosen to evaluate the utility of handheld devices for planetary exploration, and to ground-truth facies maps that document lava diversity (Voigt et al., this meeting). Team Fire's work has implications for understanding erosion rates of basaltic vents on terrestrial planets, mapping and interpreting lava facies found in fissure fed lava flows, and understanding the link between rock chemistry and sulphur dioxide observed from orbit.