About

VolcanoMap shows, on a single map with a timeline, the volcanoes that have been active during the Holocene – roughly the last 12,000 years – their eruptions and strong earthquakes. All the numbers come from open scientific catalogues; descriptions of the most famous volcanoes and earthquakes were written by the site's editors.

volcanoes

1,214

eruptions

9,906

earthquakes in catalogue

4,979

in the last 7 days

140

Data sources

Volcanoes and eruptions – Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program

The list of Holocene volcanoes (name, country, type, elevation, location, tectonic setting, year of last eruption) and the confirmed eruptions with dates and Volcanic Explosivity Index come from the Volcanoes of the World database of the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program (GVP). We fetch them from the GVP's public WFS service (layers Smithsonian_VOTW_Holocene_Volcanoes, Smithsonian_VOTW_Holocene_Eruptions and E3WebApp_Eruptions1960 – the last one flags continuing eruptions). Last fetched: 2026-11-01 02:52 UTC.

Global Volcanism Program, 2026. [Database] Volcanoes of the World (v. 5.4.0; 7 Aug 2026). Distributed by Smithsonian Institution, compiled by Venzke, E. https://doi.org/10.5479/si.GVP.VOTW5-2026.5.4. Data retrieved from webservices.volcano.si.edu.

The GVP makes its data available free of charge and asks that the database (with its version number) be cited whenever it is used. Under the Smithsonian Terms of Use the data may be used for non-commercial purposes, while commercial use requires written permission – so the volcano dataset of this site is marked as non-commercial. We do not reproduce GVP geological summaries or photos – every volcano page links to its entry in the database. Volcano names follow the GVP (with inverted parts restored: “Ruiz, Nevado del” → “Nevado del Ruiz”), with common English names for the best-known ones.

Earthquakes – USGS

Earthquakes come from the U.S. Geological Survey ANSS Comprehensive Catalog (ComCat), which is in the public domain. We fetch:

• through the FDSN Event API, all earthquakes of magnitude 6.5 and above since 1500 – before 1900 the catalogue mostly covers the Americas plus a few reconstructed historic events (e.g. Cascadia 1700), and for 1900–1960 it relies mainly on the ISC-GEM catalogue;
• earthquakes weaker than M 6.5 since 1900 that the USGS gave a significance of at least 1000 – a number combining magnitude, impact (PAGER alerts) and “Did You Feel It?” reports;
• from the GeoJSON feeds, M 4.5+ and significant earthquakes of the last 7 days – refreshed automatically (last: 2026-11-02 07:00 UTC).

Earthquakes described by the editors, those of magnitude 7.5 or more and those with a USGS significance of 1000 or more have their own page – 811 in total. The rest appear on the map and in lists, linking to the event page at the USGS. Place descriptions (“45 km SSW of …”) come from the USGS.

Map and countries

Country borders: Natural Earth (public domain), in the simplified version used by the Ominuvo map asset. A volcano's country comes from the GVP (border volcanoes belong to both countries, those in dependent territories – such as Montserrat – to the territory). An earthquake's country is determined from the epicentre's position on the map and, for offshore events, from the USGS place description or the nearest coast within 150 km. Earthquakes on mid-ocean ridges belong to no country.

How complete is the data

Eruptions and earthquakes cover different time spans and their records are not equally complete. On the timeline, periods with an incomplete record are hatched – at the top for eruptions, at the bottom for earthquakes.

Eruptions. We show the eruptions the GVP classifies as confirmed (Confirmed Eruption, without uncertain ones), from 10,000 BCE and only for volcanoes on the Holocene list – which is why the map has a few fewer (9,906) than the total number of confirmed eruptions in the GVP database. Ancient eruptions are known mostly from the deposits they left and dated by radiocarbon and similar methods (hence the “c.” and the uncertainty in years); many smaller ones are not known at all. The growing number of recorded eruptions in recent centuries mainly reflects that more and more places were being observed – the GVP warns against reading it as an increase in volcanic activity. 2,166 eruptions (22%) have no VEI estimate – on the map they are drawn as a pale, outlined triangle, because its size says nothing about the eruption's strength.

Earthquakes. The catalogue covers M 6.5+ earthquakes since 1500 and, since 1900, weaker ones the USGS rates as significant (180). Seismographs have recorded earthquakes worldwide only since about 1900 – earlier events are individual earthquakes reconstructed from chronicles and geological studies, mostly in the Americas (on the timeline: “fragmentary record”). In the first half of the 20th century the catalogue is complete only for the strongest earthquakes – around M 7.5 at the start of the century – and the completeness threshold falls as seismic networks grew. Since 1964 it is complete for earthquakes well below M 6.5, so when comparing earthquake counts across decades, look at the strongest ones. More: the ISC-GEM catalogue and the USGS analysis How complete is the ISC-GEM Global Earthquake Catalog?

The last 7 days are a separate layer with a lower threshold: M 4.5+ and significant earthquakes from the USGS feeds. Their numbers should not be compared with the historical catalogue.

How to read the data

VEI (Volcanic Explosivity Index) rates the explosiveness of an eruption from 0 to 8, mainly by the volume of material ejected and the height of the eruption column. It is logarithmic: each step means roughly ten times more material. VEI 0–1 are gentle lava outpourings, 4 is Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, 6 is Pinatubo in 1991 and 7 is Tambora in 1815. For many ancient eruptions the VEI is unknown.

Magnitude measures the energy released at an earthquake's focus. Each step means about 32 times more energy. The USGS reports several magnitude types (most often moment magnitude, Mw); for historic earthquakes they are estimates.

Dates of ancient eruptions come from radiocarbon dating, ash layers, tree rings or ice cores – hence the “c.” and uncertainty in years for many of them. An eruption lasting several years glows on the map throughout that period.

The timeline uses a piecewise-linear scale: the millennia BCE are compressed and recent centuries – where most records come from – are stretched. Eruptions grow upwards on the histogram and earthquakes downwards, like a seismograph trace.

Updates

Earthquakes from the last 7 days are refreshed every few minutes to quarter-hour, the earthquake catalogue and GVP data regularly (the GVP usually updates its database with a delay of a few weeks). This is not a warning service: for safety information rely on local geological surveys and civil protection agencies.

Licences

• USGS data – public domain. GVP data – free of charge, citation required (above).
• Country borders – Natural Earth, public domain.
• Fonts: Barlow Condensed, IBM Plex Sans, JetBrains Mono and Noto Sans – SIL Open Font License 1.1.
• Editorial descriptions – written for this site from publicly available sources. Data as JSON: volcanoes and eruptions, earthquakes.

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