“…Based on microseismicity and anisotropy studies, this outer region exhibits significant tectonic earthquakes, tectonic fractures, and fissure swarms (Bacon et al., 2022; Greenfield et al., 2020; Winder, 2021). Anomaly III is mainly concentrated in the highly fractured zones, between Askja and Herðubreið in this case, which is similar to observations in the San Andreas fault and Eastern California Shear Zone (Berg et al., 2021; Fang et al., 2018; Lin et al., 2007). In particular, Vs is found to be sensitive to highly fractured rocks (Catchings et al., 2020), but this diminishes with depth as cracks begin to close, which is also supported by studies of seismic anisotropy (Bacon et al., 2022).…”