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Terminus lakes on the south side of Vatnajökull
Figure 22. The development of terminus lakes by Viðborðsjökull and Hoffellsjökull. For explanations and cred-
its see the caption of Figure 3. – Þróun sporðlóna við Viðborðsjökull og Hoffellsjökul (sjá nánari skýringar við
3. mynd).
and had grown to > 0.05 km2 in 1989 according to
aerial photographs from the NLSI (Figure 21). This
lake was filled by river sediments and is not visible
on aerial images from Loftmyndir ehf. from 2005 but
they show another smaller lake closer to the termi-
nus with an area of ∼0.003 km2, which had grown to
> 0.1 km2 in 2018. The depth of this lake is unknown
and it may decrease in the future because of accumu-
lation of glaciofluvial sediments.
Hoffellsjökull
The advance of Hoffellsjökull during the LIA led
to the formation of four lakes that were dammed in
side valleys, Neðradalsvatn at the western margin and
Múlavatn, Gjávatn and Efstafellsvatn at the eastern
margin (Arnborg, 1955) (Figure 22). These lakes re-
leased jökulhlaups, which damaged farmland, every
year during the 19th century, and were released spo-
radically until recently (Björnsson and Pálsson, 2004;
Jónsson, 2004; Björnsson, 2009a; Guðmundsson and
others, 2015).
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