In 2007 Jarðfeingi hosted the 1st Jóannes Rasmussen conferenc in the Faroe Islands.

A pre-conference field trip around the islands and a post-conference field trip was also arranged. The conference is intended to be a forum for the distribution, use and sharing of knowledge and skills between people interested in geosciences, especially volcanology or those interested in the Northeast Atlantic Region. The conference has been named after Jóannes Rasmussen (1912-1992), who may be considered as the father of geological science in the Faroe Islands.

He was the first Faroese person with a university degree in geology, and his merits as a geoscientist are numerous. Together with his former tutor from the university, Prof. Arne Noe-Nygaard, he carried out the detailed mapping of the onshore geology of the islands, at a time when no detailed mapping of plateau basaltic terrains was performed elsewhere.

The main theme of the conference is “Evolution of Basaltic Provinces” with the following sub-themes:
  • Weathering, sedimentation and pyroclastic activity
  • Tectonic development
  • Lava morphologies
  • Timing of events
  • Geochemical evolution
  • Exploration potential of basaltic provinces

jr-conf
Jóannes Rasmussen on field trip.