The number of people living in proximity to volcanoes has clear volcanic hazards implications, and population datasets help assess volcanic risk. Provided by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the LandScan population dataset apportions census counts to grid cells based on likelihood coefficients incorporating proximity to roads, slope, land cover, nighttime lights, and other variables. These data do not account for non-resident visitors to national parks, forests, or other recreational areas in volcanic regions, which form an unknown, but sometimes non-trivial component of persons at risk from volcanic eruptions. The LandScan 2008 data set was applied to the Volcanoes of the World database (for publication in Volcanoes of the World, 3rd ed.) to calculate population densities surrounding Holocene volcanoes at radii of 5, 10, 30, and 100 km. The 20 volcanoes with the greatest population at each of those distance ranges are shown in the tables below.

Approximately 1/3 of volcano entries in this catalog are not classic stratovolcanoes that most people are familiar with, but are volcanic fields/clusters with large numbers of vents over broad areas, oceanic shield volcanoes with large footprints, or large silicic calderas. For volcanic fields, minimum population densities were calculated for those living within a rectangle encompassing the known footprint of the field, or a circle of 20 km (the average radius of database volcanic fields with documented dimensions). Similarly, 20 km minimum radii were used for large oceanic shield volcanoes and large silicic calderas that could erupt from vents in broad areas over their flanks. Due to these factors the highest population numbers at smaller distances are dominated by these larger volcanic systems.