One of the most difficult problems of standardization has been the varying usage of the word "volcano." Definitions of "volcano" range from individual vents, measured in meters, through volcanic edifices measured in kilometers or tens of kilometers, to volcanic fields measured in hundreds of kilometers. In a database compilation, the disadvantage of the narrowest definition is not so much the multiplicity of names introduced, as the dismembering of a single volcanic plumbing system's history into apparently unrelated separate records. The interiors of ancient volcanoes, now eroded and exposed for geologic study, show us that most subsurface magma chambers--the suppliers of lavas to overlying volcanoes--are at least several kilometers in diameter. We also know that many contemporary volcanoes grow by additions from countless flank vents as well as activity at a central crater. Consequently, we have tended to group closely spaced "volcanoes" such as the historical vents of the Canary Islands (many listed as separate volcanoes in the Catalog of Active Volcanoes of the World) by the major volcanic edifice on which they are found. Volcanoes listed here are rarely closer than 10 km to their nearest neighbor, and are commonly separated by at least 20 km.
Another problem is simply the identification of volcanoes. Prominent, steaming cones are easy to recognize, but water, ice, erosion, collapse processes, or dense vegetation can mask very dangerous volcanoes. For example, Lake Taupo, in the center of New Zealand's North Island, is beautifully tranquil, with no obvious features alerting non-geologists to its particularly violent history. In the Alaskan summer of 1975, two volcanologists traced an ever-thickening ash layer to a vent now covered by the Hayes Glacier, and a "new" volcano was added to the NE end of the Aleutian arc. Also in Alaska, five decades passed before the true source of this century's largest eruption was recognized: subsurface magma connections led to prominent collapse of Mount Katmai in 1912, and this was assumed to be the eruption's source until careful fieldwork showed it to be Katmai's inconspicuous neighbor, Novarupta. These examples illustrate why the listings generated from this database must be recognized as incomplete. Inclusion in this compilation may depend on thoroughness of mapping--quite variable through the world's volcanic regions--and the most dangerous volcanoes may be those not yet recognized.