Six-slide spatial briefing on the Smithsonian GVP Holocene volcano list with presenter notes.
Six-slide spatial briefing on the Smithsonian GVP Holocene volcano list with presenter notes.
1,214 volcanoes known or believed to have erupted in the last 11,700 years, from the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program. Six slides: regions, types, the recently active, the tallest, and a rift.
The Pacific arcs dominate: 206 volcanoes in the north-western Pacific (Kamchatka, the Kurils, Japan), 152 in South America, 149 in North America and 97 through Central America and the Caribbean. The stat chip counts what is in the frame, so pan and it updates.
660 of them are stratovolcanoes: the classic cone, built from alternating lava and ash. Then 138 volcanic fields, 110 shields, 85 calderas, 55 complexes and 52 fissure vents. Colour is the primary landform from the GVP classification.
231 of the 1,214 have erupted this century. The slide filters the layer to those; the rest disappear. Many of the busiest are in Indonesia, Japan, Kamchatka and Central America: the same arcs, thinned out.
Extrude every volcano by its elevation and the central Andes stand up: Ojos del Salado at 6,879 m, the highest volcano on Earth, then Llullaillaco at 6,739 m, Tipas and Incahuasi above 6,600 m, all on the Chile–Argentina border. Height is exaggerated 45× so the difference reads at this zoom.
91 volcanoes in eastern Africa trace a continent splitting in two: from the Afar triangle in Ethiopia, where Erta Ale keeps a lava lake, south through Kenya and Tanzania to Ol Doinyo Lengai, the only volcano on Earth erupting carbonatite lava.