This website presents more than 6,300 Volcanic Activity Reports (hereafter, "reports"). Most came from a world-wide network of correspondents interested in active volcanoes, which we call the Global Volcanism Network (GVN). Hundreds of individuals and organizations have contributed reports. These correspondents have ranged from fishermen, farmers, and villagers who noticed significant changes in their local environments, to scientists and technicians at volcano observatories, professors and their students at universities, public officials and observers living near volcanoes, and astronauts who photographed ash plumes from space. The list of GVN correspondents also includes aviators, meteorologists, remote sensors, tour-operators, and devoted amateurs. Correspondents are listed in the Information Contacts section of individual reports.
Readers of these reports owe a great debt to observatories and to volcano watchers around the world who sent us their informed and studied insights. It is no exaggeration to say that data in our reports are often acquired under adverse, stressful, and even hazardous conditions. We acknowledge the dedication of those obtaining data at active volcanoes and we value our partnerships with them. This website should make contributors feel proud to have joined an international effort to understand volcanism, including its range of behaviors, its monitoring, and its hazards. We hope these international partnerships will continue to grow and thrive. The correspondents and the Smithsonian Institution were linked together by a common desire to communicate and preserve insights and basic observations. Despite our name on the product of this mutual partnership, we want to make it clear that the majority of the cost, effort, and risk comes from GVN correspondents on the scene. Many reports were submitted by correspondents who have contributed regularly for many years. Their main reward has been the satisfaction of sharing their observations with others trying to understand Earth's volcanism. We hope this website serves to return the favor of all their efforts by providing a useful and fitting means of data presentation.
The reports have been edited and compiled by Smithsonian Institution staff (see Staff History and Acknowledgments, below) and disseminated in a series of Institution-supported publications since 1968. Smithsonian reports since then have discussed 412 of Earth's 1,528 Holocene volcanoes (those active in the past 10,000 years).
Our approach to learning about volcanoes by communication with a network of correspondents follows a tradition employed to study atmospheric phenomena when the Smithsonian began in the mid-1800's. The first Secretary of the Smithsonian, Joseph Henry (1797-1878), was a physicist famous for research on magnetic induction. He also wrote extensively on meteorology and its impact on agriculture, a topic akin to one volcanologists consider vital today -- climate forcing due to stratospheric aerosols following major eruptions. During his tenure as the Smithsonian's leader (1846-1878), Henry had a keen interest in geophysical phenomena, supported scientific research as the central institutional mission, enlisted networks of scientists and other observers to transmit scientific data, and provided free distribution of published scientific data and interpretations (Moyer, 1997: pages 270-271). He communicated with his network of correspondents employing the major communication advance in his day, the telegraph, enabling the Institution to produce and publicly display its own regularly updated weather maps. Some of the Institution's early correspondents gathered basic astronomical and Earth-science data, especially on solar insolation and Earth's weather and atmosphere, forming databases that remain useful and significant today (Silverman, 1997).
The Smithsonian's modern efforts also gained considerable visibility and recognition due to the aid of international geophysical, geochemical, and volcanological organizations. Summaries of Smithsonian-published reports (and in some cases annual reports) have regularly appeared in the weekly newsletter Eos (American Geophysical Union), and the monthly magazine Geotimes (American Geological Institute). They currently appear regularly in the Bulletin of Volcanology (International Association for Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior, IAVCEI).
In reading these current-activity reports, you may seek a longer history of eruptions for a given volcano. The Volcanoes of the World portion of the website shows the known eruptive history for each volcano. It has been compiled largely from published accounts of volcanism in the past 10,000 years, for each of the more than 1,500 volcanoes identified as active during that time.
The Volcanic Activity Reports section of the website includes two types of reports. The Weekly Report reflects recent events at active volcanoes. In contrast, Monthly Bulletin takes you to a much larger set of more detailed reports published by the Smithsonian (see "Source publications," below). A very useful function provided by this website is the option to view the Monthly Bulletin reports arranged by volcano and date. A small subset of reports do not easily map to volcano names. We call these Miscellaneous Reports; they comprise the three choices on the lower part of the screen.
Weekly and monthly reports are prefaced with a title (consisting of a volcano name) and header data, and close with a brief background section. The same information also appears in the Volcanoes of the World portion of the website for each volcano. The background information was compiled and composed by Lee Siebert from our literature references. Although they frequently mention historical activity, they are chiefly intended to convey volcanic morphology and basic geological history. Therefore they typically lack discussion of recent activity and are infrequently updated.
The Weekly Report provides a mechanism for learning about current unrest and eruptive activity at the world's volcanoes, and continues a long series of collaborations between the Smithsonian and the Volcano Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The reports cover a 7-day interval and are published every Wednesday. Their archive begins with the reports of 1 November 2000; they will be produced so long as staffing permits. They are intended to serve as rapidly prepared, interim updates that complement the monthly Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network. They contain some features not offered elsewhere on this website, including annotated regional maps, a "criteria and disclaimers" section, direct access to a USGS glossary of terms with photographs, and a list of commonly used acronyms and abbreviations.
The following sections explain the history and evolution of source publications for the Monthly Bulletins, and the structure of their presentation on this website.
Monthly Bulletin leads to over 6,300 reports published by the Smithsonian since 1968. Pre-1975 reports were actually published under other names as needed rather than on a monthly basis. Figures 1-3 and table 1 illustrate the various Smithsonian publications containing volcanic activity reports since 1968. The Smithsonian units that published the reports had the following three names and years of publication: the Center for Short-Lived Phenomena (CSLP, 1968-75), the Scientific Event Alert Network (SEAN, 1975-89), and the Global Volcanism Program (1989-present). Early CSLP Event Reports provided summaries of the activity, photographs, an event chronology, and described actions taken by the Center (figures 1). In August 1968 postcards ("Event Notification Reports") began being mailed to subscribers (figures 2 and 3). Reports were also reproduced or summarized in Annual Reports through 1974 (figures 4 and 5). Since the postcard reports were often confined to one, or only a few cards, they were brief and generally devoid of figures and tables.
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Figure 1. CSLP "Event Report" titled "The submarine volcanic eruption and formation of a temporary island at Metis Shoal, Tonga Islands, 11 December 1967-31 January 1968" (revised 15 June 1968, 20 p., 10 figures, references. In addition 26 "Event Information Reports" were issued about that eruptive episode. |
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Figure 2. Examples of CSLP Event Notification Reports (post cards). The top example shows the side of the card with space for the recipient's name and address. Reports were printed on the other side. Many reports described unforseen, surprising, little-known, or environmentally challenging phenomena. Event 137-74 describes a 1974 rodent infestation that occurred in Bangladesh coincident with the blooming of two species of bamboo. |
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Figure 3. Examples of CSLP Event Notification Reports (post cards). Event 145-74 reported multi-faceted eruptions at Manam volcano in Papua New Guinea during several months of 1974. Event 135-74 noted that in October 1974 a lava flow at Kliuchevskoi stratovolcano (Kamchatka) had reached 2.5 km in length and had entered into a glacier. By 1975 CSLP claimed more than 1,000 subscribers and a correspondent network including "over 1,600 scientists and institutions in 144 countries." |
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Figure 4. Cover from CSLP Annual Report, 1968 (February 1969). |
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Figure 5. Cover from CSLP Annual Report, 1974 (December 1975). |
A major change in report format took place on 1 November 1975, when individual event CSLP post cards were replaced by the monthly SEAN Bulletin printed on standard-sized paper (figures 6 and 7). In keeping with the focus of museum scientists, reporting of human-induced events (such as oil spills) ceased, reporting of biological events emphasized marine mammals, and reporting of both volcanic and meteoritic phenomena expanded. The monthly schedule and printed format of the SEAN Bulletin were continued with the successor Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network (since 1989: figures 8 and 9).
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Figure 6. Example of monthly Bulletin covers published by SEAN. Natural Science Event Bulletin (v. 1, no. 1; cover, first issue, 1 November 1975). |
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Figure 7. Example of monthly Bulletin covers published by SEAN. Bulletin of the Scientific Event Alert Network (v. 3, no. 1; cover, first issue, 31 January 1978). |
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Figure 8. Example of monthly Bulletin cover published by GVP. Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network (v. 15, no. 1; cover, first issue, 31 January 1990). |
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Figure 9. Example of monthly Bulletin cover published by GVP. Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network (v. 27, no. 5; May 2002). |
| Years | Publication Name | Date Range and Volume Numbering |
| 1968-75 | Center for Short-Lived Phenomena (CSLP) * | Printed on either post cards or full-sized sheets of paper and mailed as needed (numbering by event and year of occurrence, as Event 01-67, Event 02-67, etc.) |
| 1969-76 | Annual Report-Center for Short-Lived Phenomena (CSLP) ** | Annual; published early in the following year in book form; organized reports into various categories. |
| 1975-89 | Scientific Event Alert Network Bulletin (SEAN Bulletin) *** | Monthly; v. 1, no. 1 (1 January 1975) to v. 14, no. 12 (31 December 1989) *** |
| 1990-present | Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network (GVN Bulletin) | Monthly; v. 15, no. 1 (31 January 1990) to present |
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* The Center for Short-Lived Phenomena (CSLP) continued on for several years after 1975, under that name, but without any relation to the Smithsonian Institution or its scientists. ** SEAN began on 1 October 1975; the Annual Report for 1975 (published in 1976) was the last to include Smithsonian reports (see next footnote). *** Note that the SEAN Bulletin was published by SEAN staff during the first 2 years and 3 months (27 issues) under the initial title Natural Science Event Bulletin. The monthly Bulletin began as volume 1, number 1 (1 November 1975) and continued through volume 2, number 12 (31 December 1977). However, from the start the publication was informally known by the later-adopted name SEAN Bulletin. |
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Table 1. A list of Smithsonian Institution publications under which volcano reports both originally appeared, and now appear on this website. The "years" column shows the date of publication (not necessarily the date of the event). For 1968 an Annual Progress Report was created, and subsequent volumes were simply titled Annual Reports (1969-76). After the 1968 volume, original reports were reproduced and reorganized in each Annual Report. Volume numbering was sequential through the SEAN and GVN Bulletins, although some libraries may have separately cataloged the intermediate name discussed under footnote 3. For guidance in citing these publications see below.
The book "Global Volcanism 1975-1985" (McClelland et al., 1989) compiled the Monthly Bulletin reports for 10 years and 3 months during that interval. It is 657 pages long. Reports were arranged by volcano and date, in the same "volcanocentric" layout that we have followed here. As we started work on the reports for the next decade, we realized that, even with various editorial compression techniques, the resulting book for that interval would have been even longer. The book form included a broad-based subject index, a chronological summary, discussion of the overall context, and most reports were retrospectively reviewed by original correspondents. But to have followed a book format with the longer, post-1985 reports would have been unwieldy, and (more decisively) we found it outside the interest of publishers we contacted. Accordingly, an electronic format provided the most practical way to make the reports accessible. This web format also offered the opportunity to span the reporting for the interval from 1968 to present in a cohesive whole. Even if your library contains the entire suite of Smithsonian reports, they lack a volcano index covering the full interval. Thus, in many respects, this is the first time much of this information has gained wide accessability.
The reports as presented on this website are not exact reproductions of the original published material. The CSLP cards have been edited and presented in a manner consistent with current Bulletin standards. A one-line summary was also created for each report to be included in contents pages and indexes, a practice that started in 1978. CSLP Reports on non-volcanic topics have been omitted.
Reports from 1975-1985 underwent editing by both the original contributors and SEAN editors for publication in the book "Global Volcanism 1975-1985" (McClelland et al., 1989). Reports from 1986-1995 were revised while being prepared for other products, prior to the decision to present them on the web. Post-1996 reports remain closer to their originals, but corrections have been made directly within the text, tables, and figures, rather than printing a subsequent "Corrections" statement. We have inserted minor changes, such as repair of typographical errors and misspellings without notation. We have tried to signal significant deletions or changes through the use of ellipses (. . .), square brackets ([ ]), or by inserting a phrase (such as "Corrected from original Bulletin").
We welcome comments and reviews from observatories, contributors, and researchers to make the reporting as accurate and consistent as possible. In all cases, we have tried to follow a defined style. Background material from our files, originally at the end of many of the reports, has been moved to the start and not repeated subsequently. Detailed addresses within the "Information Contacts" have often been reduced to an organizational affiliation, especially for older reports. You may find the latest complete address in the most recent report by a given contributor. Volcano names conform to current usage, regardless of the name or spelling under which a report was originally published.
Although the paper version of the Bulletin has continued to be printed in black-and-white, in 1994 we also began to post an electronic version on the Internet, and in 1996 we began our website. Compared to the printed version, the electronic versions have included more graphics, color graphics, and some minor differences in style dictated by the new medium.
Some reports have yet to be included on this website. Absent reports consist mainly of (1) Monthly Bulletin reports for two Japanese volcanoes during 1975-1995, (2) Miscellaneous Reports, including Atmospheric Effects prior to 1995 and Special Announcements prior to November 1994, and (3) most of the CSLP Information Reports issued during April-August 1968.
Typically, reports are published in the Bulletin 1-6 weeks or more following the activity described. This delay reflects the time needed for the creation and submission of reports by network correspondents, editing and follow-up by GVN staff, and the monthly publication schedule. This process is far less rapid than unconfirmed postings on other websites and in the news. However, we think that the delay is more than offset by the advantages of insights from observers on the scene, clarifications and discussions with colleagues, and integration with supplementary information from other sources (e.g. satellite remote sensors). Accounts in peer-reviewed journals are more reliable yet, but may take over a year to appear in print (and frequently draw heavily on Smithsonian-published activity reports). New reports are added to this website within a few working days of when current printed issues of the Bulletin are published. For submission details, see the relevant subsection below.
A key aspect of the functionality of this website is the ability to see all Smithsonian reports for any one volcano in chronological order.
The reports are presented in a fixed arrangement, old (at the top) to young (at the bottom). Individual reports are identified by month/year, their publication and issue number, along with a one-line summary. Selecting a figure will bring up a full-screen version (to return, press your browser's Back button). In cases where a large number of reports and figures exist (eg. Kilauea and Etna), we have broken the reports into multiple files.
After selecting a month and year, and pressing the "Get Issue" button, users will see a table of contents page listing the volcanoes with reports published that month and a one-line summary of the activity. The volcano names are linked, and lead to that specific report within the suite of reports for that volcano. Complete issues of the Bulletin are available starting in July 1994.
This interface is a more restricted version of the name search for volcanoes; listings only provide links to those volcanoes for which the Smithsonian has published reports. Additional details about this search function are maintained in the Search Options document.
Miscellaneous Reports. A small number of reports in the original Monthly Bulletins discussed topics that lacked clear linkage to a specific volcano. We have grouped these reports together into several categories under the Miscellaneous heading.
Special Announcements consist of obituaries or other notes.
False Reports include cases where the originally reported eruptions were subsequently disproved, as well as cases where eruptions appeared highly suspicious and unlikely, or confused with other processes, such as methane combustion. Some False Reports have been disseminated via the press. Our coverage of such cases is by no means comprehensive.
Unknown Volcano Reports refer to inferred eruptions or other behavior that were uncertain at the time and have remained so. This category includes inferred volcanic plumes never linked to a specific volcano, seismic crises in a volcanic region (which were considered volcanic in character) but never clearly associated with a volcano or eruption, and inferred submarine eruptions from vents never clearly determined. Note that this heading can be confused with "Unnamed volcano." A few reports originally in the unknown category were later clearly linked to a specific volcano. In these cases, we moved them out of the unknown category and inserted them under the heading of the appropriate volcano.
Atmospheric Effects describe long-term stratospheric aerosol loading and frequently include Lidar measurements. Some were included after the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980, and they became a common Bulletin feature after the 1982 El Chichón eruption. Descriptions of the initial dispersal of major eruption clouds generally remain with the individual eruption reports but global effects such as those associated with El Chichón (1982) and Pinatubo-Hudson (1991), appear in this section.
Tips and Cautions. In general, the reports presented here are considered preliminary. However, roughly two-thirds of the eruptions chronicled in Smithsonian reports during the interval 1975-85 lacked a follow-up technical report in the literature (McClelland et al., 1989).
At the time of this writing, the archive of Weekly Reports includes ten's of reports that have yet to be included in a subsequent monthly Bulletin report. That circumstance is partly due to staffing and logistical limitations, but in many cases may be due either to a lack of activity at the volcano, or to our lack of incoming contributions describing more substantive activity. There are many more small events than substantive ones, so Bulletin reports may not always "catch up" with the pulse of low-level incidents. This does not mean that Bulletin editors have given up trying to encompass the broad picture of volcanism when it comes to low-level events. Bulletin reports need to discuss those events in the broader context of longer baselines than is typically reported in the daily and weekly intervals.
What that means to you as a reader interested in recent events is that you also need to consult Weekly Reports, particularly when the activity is at a low level. What this means to Bulletin contributors and editors is they can reduce this problem by crafting reports that include some overview of events going back in time at least as far as the last available Monthly Bulletin report. Few devices capture these ups and downs as well as quantified data presented on long-baseline plots and histograms, which we favor as a means to express changes in monitored parameters.
Besides our reports here, other first-hand reports may well exist for a volcano of interest. Our reports frequently come from websites that may have been updated or may contain more detail than we included. Many of the addresses to these websites can be found listed at the bottom of Monthly Bulletin reports, Weekly Reports, and Preliminary Notices. Our Links section also lists a variety of websites, many of which feature reports. The Volcano Listserve from Arizona State University frequently contains reports of new activity.
Although we would enjoy hearing your comments, we request that readers please refrain from asking us questions posed as student homework assignments. We just don't have time to respond to questions easily answered by encyclopedias and basic texts. We urge you to identify, visit, and learn how to use a good library; the skills you will learn are applicable to many research topics.
A longer discussion of cautions appears in McClelland et al. (1989). In addition to the preliminary nature of the reports and the value of contacting authors and seeking published reports (discussed above), the information contained in the reports arranged by volcano and date may miss important events. Thus, there may be gaps in the record, typically between, but sometimes within report intervals, or between field visits to a remote volcano. The breaks in the record may not be apparent. Like most kinds of records, the available information only reflects times of visits, functional instrumental monitoring, or clear visibility. And all this also assumes a fail-safe report submission and publication process. For most volcanoes (and human enterprises) many of these factors are neither consistent nor continuous.
A great many people have contributed over the years to the translation, interpretation, and preparation of the reports and figures submitted for publication. Many of these contractors, interns, and volunteers are listed below. Specific editorial contributors are listed on the table of contents page for each issue.
The Smithsonian Institution's systematic eruption documentation goes back to the 1963-67 Surtsey eruption off the southern coast of Iceland, where a new island was built amid considerable multidisciplinary interest. Volcanologists were joined by atmospheric scientists studying eruption-cloud dynamics, oceanographers studying marine interactions, and biologists studying the arrival of life on this new island. Smithsonian officials recognized the need for a global communications hub to report such natural events swiftly and facilitate prompt scientific attention. At the end of 1967, the Institution established the Center for Short-Lived Phenomena (CSLP) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO). Administrators involved in this new enterprise were Charles Lundquist, Assistant Director (Science) of SAO, and the Smithsonian's Assistant Secretary for Science, Sidney Galler. Scientists at the Natural History Museum, in Washington, strongly supported CSLP, and provided the research component that strengthened its growth. The museum's Division of Petrology and Volcanology began with the arrival of William Melson in 1964, and Tom Simkin joined him in 1967. In CSLP's first year alone, Smithsonian field studies in Tonga, Philippines, Galapagos, and Costa Rica were facilitated by early eruption notification. These and other CSLP actions resulted in valued additions to the museum's collections. In more recent years came the utilization of CSLP (and its successor organizations) to take the pulse of the planet's volcanism.
CSLP Director Bob Citron had managed several SAO satellite-tracking stations, and brought great energy and enthusiasm to this new job. With secretary Lee Cavanaugh, he developed a network of correspondents around the world and mailed individual postcards describing natural events shortly after the information was received. They were joined in mid-1968 by David Squires and John Whitman, and later by Sarah Meselson, Richard DiBenedetto, Patricia Scanlon, and Shirley Maina. The Center grew rapidly and was soon reporting on a wide variety of biological and anthropological as well as geophysical events. By 1975, however, the distance between the Center and the Washington-based Smithsonian scientists most interested in its work had become a problem. Furthermore, the SAO communications network had ceased with the end of their satellite-tracking contract. Therefore, the Institution transferred key CSLP employees to Washington, and established the Scientific Event Alert Network (SEAN) in the National Museum of Natural History.
In Washington, initial SEAN staff consisted of geographer David Squires (operations manager), biologist Shirley Maina, John Whitman, and administrative assistant Betty Grier. Oversight was provided by a Scientific Advisory Committee chaired successively by mammalogist Henry Setzer, William Melson (from October 1976), and Tom Simkin (from February 1978). In keeping with the interests of museum scientists, biological reports focused on marine mammals, and both volcanic and meteoritic reporting were greatly expanded. In October 1975, a monthly SEAN Bulletin mailed to correspondents replaced individual event postcards.
Lindsay McClelland joined SEAN in late 1976, upon Whitman's departure, and was the mainstay of SEAN and GVN reporting, his name and efforts becoming almost synonymous with the monthly Bulletins for 16 years. SEAN moved into the Museum's Department of Mineral Sciences in early 1981; at that time, Janet Crampton and Paula Rothman were hired as half-time geological and biological assistants, respectively. Museum budget cuts the following year caused the reluctant closing of SEAN's biological reporting. At the end of that year Elizabeth Nielsen was hired to work part-time at SEAN in addition to her other research-assistant responsibilities, and she made contributions in many areas over the next 5.5 years.
In 1984 Congress approved funding for the Museum's Global Volcanism Program (GVP), and in the following year Emily Wegert replaced Crampton. Later in 1985, Marge Summers and Toni Duggan were hired, and all three had substantial involvement in Bulletin preparation. Following the departure of Wegert and Duggan, Lisa Wainger arrived, and eight months later, in August of 1987, we joined the electronic revolution by posting Bulletin reports on electronic bulletin boards OMNET and KOSMOS. In mid-1988, Elizabeth Nielsen moved to Oregon and was replaced by Katherine Dunker (Romanak). From the mid-1980s through 1992, Luigi Mancini provided invaluable assistance with translations.
Starting in 1986, Lindsay McClelland, Tom Simkin, Marge Summers, Elizabeth Nielsen, and Tom Stein produced a book compiling SEAN's first 10 years of reporting on global volcanism (McClelland et al., 1989). Stein had replaced Jon Dehn, GVP's first computer specialist, and was principally responsible for the new layout software used for the book (and the Bulletin since January 1990). Reports were reformatted chronologically by volcano - the model for this section of the web site - and edited, updated (for new publications), analyzed, and thoroughly indexed. Susan Harrington and Katharine Duncker also contributed to this major effort.
With the first issue of 1990, the Bulletin introduced a new format along with a new name, Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network. The name change was instituted to avoid public confusion (e.g. telephone inquiries about the next Smithsonian dinosaur "event") and to reflect the change in focus that had occurred over the previous 15 years; by that time over 90% of the Bulletin was devoted to global volcanism.
In the Spring of 1990 Katherine Romanak left and was replaced by David Lescinsky. Linda Schramm was responsible for meteorite and fireball reports from late 1991. Additional GVN staff during the early 1990s included (in approximate chronological order) Kevin Kivimaki, Steven Glennie, Maria Slaboda, Pamela Conrad, Cheryl Petrina, and Jerry Burgess.
The time period 1992-93 saw significant changes, including the arrival of Edward Venzke, replacing David Lescinsky, in September 1992, and the departure of Lindsay McClelland in early 1993. After a long six months, Richard Wunderman arrived as managing editor. Fireball and meteorite-fall reports also ceased at the end of 1992, but the International Meteor Organization took on this reporting task with a newsletter dedicated to the subject. Technology changes resulted in the decreasing use of postal mail and telex for report submissions in favor of facsimile and electronic mail. New software for word processing, desktop publishing, and figure preparation was implemented.
U.S. Geological Survey volcano observatory staff have provided most Bulletin reports on U.S. volcanoes and have had longstanding detailed interactions with GVP staff. As an example, Tom Murray of the Cascades Volcano Observatory joined us at the Smithsonian on a short assignment in 1993, following the departure of McClelland.
Over the next four years, GVN workers included Jonathan Goldberg (1993), Athene Cua (1993-94), Genyong Peng (1994-96), Justin Mog (1994), and Peter Nichols (1994-95).
Through the efforts of Ed Venzke, current monthly Bulletin reports made their first Internet appearance on a gopher server in 1994, moving to a website in 1996; since that time earlier Monthly Bulletin reports have been incrementally added. Although SEAN and GVN texts were in digital format, much work with illustrations was required. CSLP reports had to be manually keyed into a word processor. All CSLP and SEAN reports required the creation or transcription of one-line summaries to produce table of contents pages and report indexes. Kathleen O'Siadhail (1998-2001) was contracted to convert a large portion of the edited reports into html pages and link them properly.
Rick Wunderman's campaign to utilize volunteers to a greater extent was very successful starting in 1996. Those who helped prepare reports since then include Heike Mainhardt (1996-99), Zakhia Grant (1997), Virginia Scanlon (1998), Melinda Berriman (1998-2000), Beatrice Branch (1999), Kristen Meek (1999), and intern Sabrina Boyer (2000). Past volunteers include David Charvonia, David Spaans, Vince Aquilino, Graham Zorn, Veronica Bemis, Jerry Hudis, Antonia Bookbinder, Jeremy Bookbinder, and Margo Morell. The tradition continues through the present with volunteers Stephen Bentley (since 1997), Jacquelyn Gluck (since 2000), Robert Andrews (since 2003), William Henoch (since 2004), Hugh Replogle and Paul Berger (since 2006), Megghan Oksanen (since 2007), and Luda Eichelberger (since 2008).
GVP contract staff making valuable contributions to the Bulletin, in addition to other duties, included Guiseppina Kysar (1995-97), Paul Kimberly (1997), Christina Calvin (2000), and Alicia Arroyo (1999-2000). Staff chiefly devoted to the Bulletin included Laura Norden (1997-98), Ross Murray (1997-99), Luke Jensen (2000-2001), and Jennifer Fela (who began in September 2001).
For more than a quarter century, since the onset of Smithsonian volcano reporting in the late 1960s, GVP director Tom Simkin provided editorial guidance, including final text review of nearly all Bulletins from 1975 to 1992. Jim Luhr became GVP director in 1995 and edited final-draft Bulletin reports starting in 1993. An additional layer of editorial scrutiny has been in place since 1995, when Lee Siebert began editing final layouts of the Bulletin. Following the unexpected passing of Jim Luhr in January 2007, Lee Siebert became GVP director and assumed final proof editing responsibilities, and Jon Castro made final-layout edits. Other nearby resources, drawn upon by GVN, include: frequent advice from volcanologist curators William Melson and Tom Simkin (from 1967), Dick Fiske (from 1976), and Jim Luhr (from 1991); translations from Gene Jarosewich, Joe Nelen, Victoria Avery, Giuseppina Kysar, and Satoshi Okamura; and a constant flow of information from Lee Siebert and the Volcano Reference File (the Museum's database of global volcanism for the past 10,000 years). The Institution's computer specialists (including Dave Bridge, Bruce Daniels, Gary Gautier, Pete Kauslick, Kathy Lawson, and Anne Quade) assisted with various databases.
GVP computer specialists Jon Dehn (1986-87), Tom Stein (1987-90), Roland Pool (1991-96), Genyong Peng (1994-97), and Paul Kimberly (1996-present) contributed valuable expertise. The Global Volcanism Program's archive of maps, photos, illustrations, videos and other resources was established and expanded thanks to efforts by Elizabeth Nielsen, Courtenay Wilkerson, and Julie Lewis. In early 1987, Ellen Thurnau was hired by GVP as our administrative assistant, and was promptly commandeered by the Department of Mineral Sciences for larger duties. Through all these years, though, she has (amazingly) continued to serve as our GVP administrative mainstay.
Weekly Reports were the inspiration of Marianne Guffanti of the USGS Volcano Hazards Program, who recognized the importance of timely eruption reporting and was successful in obtaining funding for a USGS position to be stationed at the Smithsonian. USGS employee Gari Mayberry arrived at the Smithsonian in the summer of 2000 and began producing Weekly Reports in collaboration with GVP staff in the fall of that year. USGS Contractor Sally Kuhn Sennert succeeded Mayberry in May 2006. Currently, the Weekly Reports are reviewed first by either Rick Wunderman or Ed Venzke and then by Jon Castro or Lee Siebert. Volcano background paragraphs are provided by Lee Siebert from the Volcano Reference File. Sally Sennert also contributes to the Bulletin on a regular basis. In March 2008, an RSS newsfeed for the Weekly Reports was made available.
If you wish to use material from this website for your own purposes, we urge you to consult the <a href="http://www.si.edu/copyright/">Smithsonian copyright policy</a>, and to credit the people and organizations who originally submitted these reports (as listed in Information Contacts).
We make the following recommendations to users confronting the question of how to reference our publications. Recall that a citation is a brief notation in text that uniquely refers to an item in the reference list. The reference list consists of longer, more detailed descriptions of the work that enables a reader to locate it even in the largest library. The citation style is often dictated by the publication. What follows are the formats appropriate for the longer reference list.
For formal scientific citation of the Volcanic Activity Reports section of this website as a whole, please use the following:
Venzke E, Wunderman R W, McClelland L, Simkin, T, Luhr, JF, Siebert L, Mayberry G, and Sennert S (eds.) (2002-). Global Volcanism, 1968 to the Present. Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program Digital Information Series, GVP-4 (http://www.volcano.si.edu/reports/).
The dash after the year indicates a non-static document that is updated in subsequent years. When citing website documents such as this, adding the access date at the end of the citation provides chronological context for the citation.
For most uses, the monthly Bulletin reports, or groups of reports, should be cited in the text as: Smithsonian Institution ([year]). References should use the following example formats:
Smithsonian Institution (2002). Nyiragongo. Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network, v. 27, no. 3.
Smithsonian Institution (1982). Nyiragongo. Scientific Event Alert Network (SEAN) Bulletin, v. 7, nos. 6-7, 10.
Smithsonian Institution (1971). Nyiragongo. Center for Short-Lived Phenomena, Event Notification Report, nos. 1127 and 1163.
As shown in the second and third examples above, a set of reports from a given year can be grouped as one entry.
Background information found in these reports originates in the Volcano Reference File. Additional information about a volcano can be found in the "Volcanoes of the World" section of the website; see About Volcanoes of the World for citation guidelines.
McClelland, L., Simkin, T., Summers, M., Nielsen, E., and Stein, T.C., 1989, Global Volcanism 1975-1985: Prentice-Hall and American Geophysical Union, 653 p.
Moyer, A.E., 1997, Joseph Henry: the rise of an American scientist: Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington and London, 347 p.
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