Icelandic, flood, or fissure eruptions are all terms for volcanic eruptions that flood the surface of the Earth with massive amounts of very hot, very thin, runny lava. The lava comes out of the ground through long cracks in the surface called fissures. Some of these fissures can be up to 15 miles long.

The type of cone produced from icelandic eruptions is a shield cone. Shield cones are very low and very broad shaped volcanoes. These volcanoes erupt many times over the same area forming huge, and thick lava plateaus.

The Deccan Plateau of India was formed this way and covers 100,000 square miles (A little smaller than the state of Montana). The Columbia Plateau of the western United States is the largest lava plateau in the world. It covers almost 100,000 square miles and is almost a mile thick in places.

The photo on the left of the card is of Krafla Volcano on the island of Iceland.

Click on the "Next" button to study another eruption that produces shield cones.