Establishment of a Biological Monitoring Site on the Eyjafjallajoekull Fissure, Iceland

The Eyjafjallajoekull fissure, east of Reykjavik, Iceland, ruptured on April 15, spreading lava from 1 km-long opening. This event offers us a remarkable opportunity to establish a long-term ecological monitoring site to study the colonization of volcanic lava flows over time, to understand the development of a carbon cycle in newly formed rocks and the early processes of biological rock weathering. In this urgency grant we seek support to begin biological monitoring of the lava and to establish a microbial monitoring observatory on the flows. This work has direct importance for two areas of earth sciences: 1) understanding how fresh volcanic rocks, which account for 30% of carbon dioxide drawdown from the atmosphere each year through weathering, become colonized and what role a biota plays in rock weathering soon after its emplacement, 2) understanding the sequence of events for the establishment of a carbon cycle and active microbial communities on volcanic rocks, the most widespread and commonly formed new rock substrate on the Earth. We plan to carry out preliminary sampling and analysis of lava from of the site and to establish a weather station with a view to long-term monitoring of the biotic community on the flows. This work will yield new scientific insights into volcanic rock colonization and new defined protocols and technical insights into establishing long-term microbial observatories which we could apply elsewhere.