At almost 5,000 feet heklas distinctive cone towers above the landscape. Shes one of icelands most active volcanoes, erupting over 20 times in the last thousand years. Hekla last erupted in 2000 and recently her eruptions have been mild. But thors discovered a place that shows just how explosive she can be. And with hekla its all about ash. The snowcovered mountain in the background there is the hekla volcano itself. And here in the foreground this lightcolored layer there at the top was erupted from hekla 3,000 years ago. Narrator these ash layers tell thor a great deal about heklas explosive past. Thordarson the reason why we spend our time studying these ash layers is that we can get information about the nature of the eruption, its intensity, its explosive power, and how widely it affected the environment. Narrator hes discovered one particular eruption from hekla 3,000 years ago which threw out a tremendous amount of ash. If you look at the landscape around us, all the surface is