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How far is the next volcano? The spatial distribution of volcanologists

Gilles Seropian 1, Thomas J. Aubry1, Jamie I. Farquharson2,3, James Hickey1

  • Affiliations: 1Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Penryn, UK; 2Institute for Research Administration, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan; 3Research Institute for Natural Hazards and Disaster Recovery, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan 

  • Presentation type: Poster

  • Presentation time: Thursday 16:30 - 18:30, Room Poster Hall

  • Poster Board Number: 275

  • Programme No: 7.3.6

  • Theme 7 > Session 3

Abstract

Volcanoes are not randomly located on Earth; neither are volcanologists. We computed the physical distance between volcanologists' affiliations and volcanoes by considering two categories of volcanoes: (1) volcanoes that erupted in the Holocene, and (2) in 1974--2024. Affiliations were extracted from articles published since 1980 in four of the main English speaking volcanology-focused journals. 27% of volcanologists are based within 100km of a Holocene volcano (world population: 14%). >85% of volcanologists are within 1000km of a Holocene volcano, but 48% must travel >1000km to visit a volcano that erupted in the past 50 years. We observed that researchers working nearer volcanoes tend to lead articles with more co-authors. We also found that authors in further positions tend to be based nearer recently active volcanoes, though this correlation is less significant. Using keywords to identify each article's studied volcano, we performed single volcano analysis. We observed significant differences in the distance from authors to the target volcano. For instance, we obtained median author-volcano distances of 9 km for Campi Flegrei and 11,735 km for Merapi. This analysis also permitted a simplistic estimate of the carbon footprint from fieldwork travels, yielding CO2 equivalent emissions in the range 0.3-2.6 ton/article. The database presented is very rich and could serve future efforts in science strategy, equality, diversity and inclusivity, outreach, and sustainability. This poster will present the main outcomes from this study, focusing on the volcanoes that erupted in the last 50 years, bibliometric implications for equality, diversity and inclusivity and outreach potential.