In the Shadow of the Volcano: How Many People Live Near the World's Holocene Volcanoes, from the Smithsonian's Volcanoes of the World Database

The Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program (GVP) lists 1,215 volcanoes with evidence of activity in the Holocene and gives, for most of them, the number of people living within 5, 10, 30 and 100 km. Summing those figures counts people who live near several volcanoes more than once. I bound the number of distinct people from below by summing only volcanoes whose circles do not overlap, and from above by the simple sum. At least 52.9 million people live within 10 km of a Holocene volcano (upper bound 56.4 million), at least 147.5 million within 30 km (upper bound 273.5 million) and at least 532.4 million within 100 km. Indonesia accounts for 28% of the 30 km lower bound, followed by Mexico, Japan, the Philippines and Italy. 76 volcanoes have a million or more people within 30 km; the most crowded are the Tatun Volcanic Group beside Taipei, the Michoacán-Guanajuato field in Mexico and Tangkuban Parahu above Bandung. 21 volcanoes with a million or more people within 30 km have erupted since 2000. Recorded eruptions rise 8.8-fold from the seventeenth to the twentieth century while eruptions of VEI 4 or more rise 2.0-fold, a pattern that reflects reporting more than volcanism. The population figures are a fixed snapshot from the GVP and the distances are not hazard zones. Interactive version: https://maps.tristanhotham.com/volcano-neighbours/. Data and code: https://github.com/Tristan-Hotham/volcano-neighbours. Blog post: https://blog.tristanhotham.com/2026/10/31/volcano-neighbours/. Data: Global Volcanism Program, 2025. Volcanoes of the World (v. 5.3.5). Distributed by Smithsonian Institution, compiled by Venzke, E. https://volcano.si.edu/ (accessed via the named GitHub mirrors). Global Volcanism Program, 2024. Volcanoes of the World (v. 5.1.7). Distributed by Smithsonian Institution, compiled by Venzke, E. Population snapshot. https://volcano.si.edu/ (accessed via the named GitHub mirrors). NOAA NCEI Global Significant Volcanic Eruptions Database, doi:10.7289/V5JW8BSH. Bird (2003) plate boundaries (ODC-By 1.0). Natural Earth. Licences: the paper is CC BY 4.0 and the code MIT. The tables in data/ are derived from the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program database and are shared under the Smithsonian's terms of use (non-commercial use with credit), not under CC BY. This work is not endorsed by the Smithsonian Institution. I wrote the text, with drafting and editing assistance from Claude (Anthropic), which also helped prepare the analysis code. I reviewed and checked all text and results.