About This Project
A free, open visualization of the world’s active volcanoes
What this is
Volcanoes on the Map is an interactive world map of every one of Earth’s roughly 1,300 volcanoes that have been active in the Holocene, plus every eruption recorded since 1900. A year slider lets you move through the eruption record and watch the volcanic arcs light up along the plate boundaries.
It is a companion to Earthquakes on the Map and The Pangea Map. All are non-commercial and free to use.
The data
All volcano and eruption data comes from the Global Volcanism Program (GVP) of the Smithsonian Institution — the standard global reference — retrieved through its public GeoServer web service. It is compiled from published literature and reports from volcano observatories worldwide.
Please cite the source as: Global Volcanism Program (2013), Volcanoes of the World, v. 5.x, Smithsonian Institution, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.GVP.VOTW5. The data is thinned to a compact form and served as static JSON. It is a periodic snapshot, not a live feed — the snapshot date is in the footer.
What is on the map
The map shows two things: every volcano with a confirmed Holocene eruption (about the last 12,000 years), drawn as a small marker; and every eruption GVP records with a start date in 1900 or later that is not flagged “discredited”, drawn as a circle coloured and sized by Volcanic Explosivity Index.
Eruption dates are frequently known only to the year. The VEI is often unrecorded for smaller or older eruptions, and those are shown in grey. Small eruptions in remote areas — and almost all submarine eruptions — never enter the record at all, so a rising eruption count over time partly reflects better global observation, especially since satellite monitoring became routine around 1980.
How the site is built
The site is a static site built with Astro. The map is drawn with D3 using an equirectangular projection; the land outline is from Natural Earth via the world-atlas dataset. There is no map tile server and no framework running in your browser beyond the small D3 bundle.
The site sets no advertising or tracking cookies. Traffic analytics use Umami, a cookieless, privacy-friendly tool self-hosted on our own subdomain. See the privacy page for details.
Corrections and contact
This site aims to reflect established, peer-reviewed volcanology and the Smithsonian’s catalogue. If you spot an error — a wrong VEI, a mislabelled eruption, an out-of-date figure — please write to [email protected] and it will be corrected.
This project is not affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Geological Survey, or any government agency. It is not an emergency service. For volcano hazard and safety information, consult your national volcano observatory or civil-protection authority.
Sources
- Global Volcanism Program, 2013. Volcanoes of the World (v. 5.x), Smithsonian Institution. https://doi.org/10.5479/si.GVP.VOTW5 — accessed via webservices.volcano.si.edu.
- U.S. Geological Survey — Volcano Hazards Program educational pages.
- Natural Earth / world-atlas — public-domain vector land data.