Stephen Sparks is a volcanologist who has studied very large volcanic eruptions. GiveWell spoke with Professor Sparks to learn about the risks due to large volcanic eruptions, and interventions to mitigate the damage. He highlighted eruptions that
would have a global disruptive impact but are smaller than the largest eruptions on record, and which occur every few hundred years, as being especially worthy of attention.
Interventions to mitigate the damage of very large eruptions are (i) studying what their impact would be, so as to prepare accordingly and (ii) developing better techniques to locate of volcanoes with high potential for very large eruptions (iii)
prioritize the monitoring and investigation of these volcanoes.