Acknowledgements

There are many people who have helped with the production of this database. This project was originally funded by a grant from the Natural Environment Research Council in 1994. Since then, additional funding, mainly from the Leverhulme Trust, has enabled further development of the system. This is particularily the case with the addition of the Mexican data.

Particular thanks must go to Bruce Gittings (Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh) for designing the original interface with Oracle, maintaining the Geography WWW server and building the original Tephramap part of the system. Steve Dowers (Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh) help with the more technical sides of the database development, especially with the Oracle CASE and Developer 2000 software. Malcolm Murray has always been enthusiastic support and the Tephrabase logos are his and his comments on WWW page design were and are invaluable. Hjalti Guðnundsson helped with the translation of some of the Icelandic literature. Sarah Davies has provided the information on maar lakes in central Mexico.

Finally, Guðrún Larsen and Jón Eiríksson (Science Institute, Reykjavík) and Andy Dugmore (Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh) have provided valuable comments on the database design and structure and specifically on the tephrochronological and volcanological aspects.