Jökulsárlón by János Kovács, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
This photo of an awe-inspiring icy landscape is without a doubt one of the best we have ever featured in our weekly Imaggeo on Mondays. The Icelandic glacial lagoon Jökulsárlón is gloomy and cold. Yet the brilliant blue of the ice and the turquoise of the water stand out beautifully in this image, giving it a je-ne-sais-quoi of magic.
The photographer, János Kovács, a geologist at the University of Pécs in Hungary, is no stranger to taking stunning geosciences-related photos, one of which we featured previously in our weekly column. “Both pictures were taken on a field trip with colleagues, which we did not embark upon for research purposes, but for deepening our geoscience knowledge and experience,” he says.
Jökulsárlón, which means ‘glacier river lagoon’, is fed by the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier and began to form a few decades ago when the glacier started receding from the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The lagoon has been growing in size at varying rates ever since. Its area has increased by a factor of four since the 1970s and the lake recently became the deepest in Iceland at over 248 metres.
This natural wonder is one of the country’s most popular attractions, being also a preferred spot for shooting movies. It has featured in two James Bond films, as well as in “Tomb Raider” and “Batman Begins”.
For more information about how the lake formed, check out the image description at Imaggeo, where you can also view and download the full resolution image.
Imaggeo is the online open access geosciences image repository of the European Geosciences Union. Every geoscientist who is an amateur photographer (but also other people) can submit their images to this repository. Being open access, it can be used by scientists for their presentations or publications as well as by the press. If you submit your images to imaggeo, you retain full rights of use, since they are licenced and distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.
