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avachinsky-russia
So, over the last few weeks, I've been learning how to use R, a software package that does statistical analyses and data plotting (and more). Rather than using the data sets that are included in the software to learn how to make it do what I want it to do, I thought it would be more fun to look at a decently sized data set that might be of more interest to me. So, I downloaded the Global Volcanism Program's list of large Holocene* eruptions (defined as VEI of 4 or greater) and have been using that as a testbed for my new R skills. One of the first things I did was compile a count of how many times each volcano shows up in the large Holocene eruptions list - sort of a quick assay of what are the most active volcanoes. Well, maybe not the most active - there are many volcanoes that have erupted frequently over the last 10,000 years before at VEI of less than 4. Kilauea is a good example of this, as it is very active, but only shows up a couple times in the large Holocene eruption list. This list is something like "most large eruptions from a single volcano" list. Now, as with any list like this, we're biased towards (a) more recent eruptions that appear in the historic record and (b) volcanoes that are not in remote locations. There may well be other large Holocene eruptions that we haven't identified or have misidentified (see my discussion of the missing eruption of 1258). So, this list becomes "most large eruptions from a single volcano that we know of." Bit of a mouthful, so instead let's just call it "the heavy hitters of Holocene volcanism."
* The Holocene Epoch is roughly the last 10,000 years. There is some discussion of whether the Holocene is over and we're now into what some people call the Anthropocene.
