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Worldwide Database of Volcanic Ground Deformation

Contributor Guidelines

The guidelines below are designed to help contributors fill out the form for adding or editing a volcano database entry.

Volcano name, Volcano number, Latitude and Longitude should be as they appear in the Smithsonian Database (download the ‘Holocene Spreadsheet’ from the Database menu, here). In the case of deformation not clearly associated with a particular volcanic edifice, assign it to the nearest edifice and make this clear in the Characteristics of Deformation box, including latitude and longitude of the centre of deformation. Please take particular care with volcanoes that have non-unique names – check that the Volcano number, Latitude and Longitude all match the Smithsonian Database.

Please assign each volcano to one of the 19 Volcanic Regions used by the Smithsonian Database using the Category checkboxes to the right of the form. These can be checked against the ‘Holocene Spreadsheet’.

Under Geodetic measurements, select ‘Yes’ for cases where deformation measurements have been made, and ‘No’ if there have never been any measurements. If there have been geodetic measurements and deformation of the volcano was shown, the field Deformation Detected should be set to ‘Yes’. This should only set to ‘No’ if there have been geodetic measurements that have not demonstrated deformation.

For the Measurement Method(s) check boxes, please tick as many as apply. Make sure to record the time periods covered by each measurement method and any differences in the type of deformation measured in the Characteristics of Deformation section. If you enter text into the ‘Other’ box it will appear on the website exactly as you type it, so make sure that it is phrased clearly and concisely.

Please indicate the Duration of Observations using dates (MM/YYYY) separated by a hyphen. If measurements were made over several discrete periods please list these separated by a comma, e.g. 05/2007-08/2007, 01/2008-10/2009.

Choose as many Inferred Causes of Deformation as you judge to apply. For more information about the categories we use here, read this section. If you enter text into the ‘Other’ box it will appear on the website exactly as you type it, so make sure that it is phrased clearly and concisely.

The Characteristics of Deformation box should contain information about all of the observations of deformation, their interpretation and results from modelling. This should be as quantitative as possible and include references (format: Anon et al., 2014). The information contained here will of course vary significantly between volcanoes, but please use the points below as a checklist. You may need to address each point for multiple measurement techniques or periods of observation. Make sure to use SI units and appropriate references in this section.

You can add up to five References for each volcano (one reference is compulsory). Please include all author names and don’t use abbreviations in the title or journal name. If the article has a doi, please use it and where possible turn it into a hyperlink.

In order to help with the organisation, it is important to keep a record of the volcanoes that you create an entry for.

Static figures can be included to illustrate the database entry. Please provide figures in jpg format, no larger than ~500 x 300. Captions must include a source for the image, preferably a reference.

Internal Contributors: place images in the website/static/ folder on the server with a systematic stem, e.g. volcano_name/volcano_name1.jpg
External Contributors: please contribute static images in jpg format by email