Active/dormant/extinct are not ternary since even “active” volcanoes don’t erupt all the time. Active and extinct are more like endpoints with most volcanoes f

Active/dormant/extinct are not ternary since even “active” volcanoes don’t erupt all the time. Active and extinct are more like endpoints with most volcanoes falling into some degree of dormancy, usually indexed by how long it has been since last eruption. The surprising thing is there doesn’t seem to be correlation between time since last eruption, and size/shallowness of a magma chamber. That essentially removes one of the signals that vulcanologists were hoping would help inform predictions of the timing of the next eruption. > I always thought dormant merely means asleep - as in not currently active, but may wake up at any time. There is a lot of hope that dormant volcanoes don’t wake up at “any” time, but rather at predictable times. And the farther in advance we can make an accurate prediction, the better. So a lot of volcano research inclines toward “can this help us improve our predictions?”