http://www.volcano.si.edu/index.cfm

Call it the inner child, but I have always had a fascination with things that go “BOOM!” Of course, when we began to learn about volcanoes in class, my ears perked up and I looked forward to finding out about their development and the predictability of their eruptions.

This site, sponsored by the Smithsonian creates a world-wide map of all the volcanoes, but above water and under water and gives significant information about their most recent explosions, their size, their history, etc. They even have interactive maps in which you can click on any volcano in the world and find out just about everything known up to date.

It was also interesting to find out that most volcanoes don’t have the resources and funding available to predict the future eruptions and monitor the seismic activity. It takes a lot of money and apparently we don’t have enough funding to keep track of every volcano. Clearly this means there is a lot of danger for anyone around an unmonitored volcano at any time.

The site provides information on literally everything you might need to know about volcanoes but it also admits the things we do not know about volcanoes and unpredictability that is associated with them. This is a great resource for anyone interested in volcanic activity across the world as it is constantly updated with new peer-reviewed articles about eruptions and predictions. I would suggest this to any curious GIS-er or civilian scientist looking for volcanic information..

-Patrick Jones