Editorial: Patterns and trends of time-space evolution of volcanism, from local to global

Volcanism is one of the most obvious Earth surface manifestations of the deep-seated geodynamic processes driving global tectonics and shaping our planet’s topographic surface. It has accompanied Earth’s evolution and history over millions to billions of years of its geological past. Thus, understanding the evolution of volcanism in space and time helps the comprehension of geodynamic processes at all scales of time and space. For instance, revealing the time–space evolution pattern of volcanic activity over a given territory—either locally (e.g., the East Carpathians in Romania, Szakács et al., 2018, or Burgenland in Austria; Neubauer and Cao, 2021), regionally (e.g., the Andes, Norini et al., 2013), in a subcontinental (e.g., Mexico, Bellotti et al., 2006) or continental area (e.g., along the East African Volcanic System, Hassan et al., 2020; Biggs et al., 2021), or even at a global scale—may offer important clues for the reconstruction of the past geodynamic/tectonic evolution of those areas. Similarly, time-dependent trends of migration of volcanic centers and trends of magma composition variations in time and space, along with other quantizable volcanism-related parameters (such as magma output volumes and rates through volcanic activity), may help to gain a deeper insight into deep Earth processes. The refinement and unprecedented accuracy of the dating methodology of volcanic products acquired over the past few decades along with the concurrent accumulation of a significant wealth of information on the timing and evolution of volcanic activity worldwide allows us today to consider data synthesis and interpretation in terms of time–space evolution patterns and trends of volcanism at all possible scales, from the local to global. Frontiers in Earth Science intended to collect papers addressing this Research Topic and answering questions such as “How has volcanic activity evolved in space and time within a given territory?”, “To what extent do local patterns and trends of volcanic evolution fit within regional trends?”, or, just the opposite, “How are regional trends of volcanism reflected in local ones?”, “How is the geodynamic evolution of a territory is reflected in its volcanism?”, and, vice versa, “How does volcanism eventually feedback to local regional tectonic evolution?”.