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[vassock]

How can I find areas where magma is close to the surface? Other than by embarking on an obvious volcano.

[weenog]

AFAIK the surest way is to make areas where magma is close to the surface.

If you're in an area where you suspect magma is close to the surface, but haven't seen any yet, breach the caverns in multiple places (use smoothed stone and fortification carving, if you'd prefer to avoid leaving open paths) so you can see more area, and look for a magma tube.  You can find them reaching to or beyond the first cavern, sometimes.

[laularukyrumo]

Alternatively, look up Magma Pistons, or research ways to haul magma via minecarts.

[Repseki]

If you're willing to use DFHack, you could also use prospect to see embark level vs level of magma, but it's probably easier, and faster, to just make such an area through world gen.

[weenog]

I considered magma pistons to be covered under making areas where magma is close to the surface.

[urmane]

If you want this just to get access to magma, it's really not that big a deal to search by digging a single tile of up/down staircases going straight down.  You'll probably have to route around / wall off inadvertent cavern breaches, but it doesn't take long to find it.

Now, getting all your ore there and useful items back up, that'll take more work

[Crashmaster]

You could gen a new world with cavern layers set to 1 or even none I think. Also change the amount of layers  under the surface perhaps.

[Lielac]

If you want this just to get access to magma, it's really not that big a deal to search by digging a single tile of up/down staircases going straight down.  You'll probably have to route around / wall off inadvertent cavern breaches, but it doesn't take long to find it.

Now, getting all your ore there and useful items back up, that'll take more work

If you make your up/down in the inner corner of an embark tile (by, say, counting 48 Urists diagonally in from the corner of your embark), then you probably won't hit anything before your copper pick strikes semi-molten, and then you can send out exploratory tendrils above that. Caaaaareful with this, though, and pay attention to the hot stone complaints, otherwise you'll end up with ‼miner‼s.

[Sutremaine]

Reducing the number of cavern layers beneath the surface will cut off a good few levels per cavern removed. When you take away one cavern, caverns 2 and 3 get squashed together in terms of what spawns there, leaving cavern 1 unaffected. If you take away two caverns, your only cavern layer will generate creatures from all three layers, which may be dangerous if the RNG serves up something nasty (though personally, I find cavern 1-2 troglodytes to be the most unpleasant cavern wildlife. They're not as dangerous individually as a jabberer or a cave dragon, but they're dangerous enough and don't come individually, swamping cage traps and busting your citizens' heads and spreading out your military).

Smushing everything into one layer doesn't affect what cavern wildlife the dwarves have access to, though removing caverns altogether will cut off access to subterranean flora and fauna.