Remember to cast your vote for Group E at the bottom of this post!

Germany – 3/1/0/0

One of the most impressive volcanic deposits I’ve seen is in Germany. Just south of Dusseldorf and Cologne is Laacher See, the source of a massive eruption ~12,900 years ago. It is part of the East Eifel volcanic field and there is good evidence that people living in the region felt the impact of this blast that coated the landscape across central Europe with ash. Laacher See isn’t even the most recent eruption in Germany. That title belongs to the Ulmener, Pulvermaar, and Strohn maars (more or less blast pits from magma interacting with water) in the West Eifel Volcanic Field about 10,000 years ago.

Curaçao – 0/0/0/0

Curaçao, the island off the coast of Venezuela, is located almost exactly due south from Haiti on the other side of the Caribbean plate. This means, much like Haiti, there isn’t much in the way of volcanoes on Curaçao. More precisely, there are no volcanoes. There are volcanic rocks that make up much of the island, but they are old, dating back to as far as 145 million years ago but not lasting into the Cenozoic (~66 million years ago). You have to go nearly 800 kilometers to get to any volcano in the GVP database!

Ivory Coast – 0/0/0/0

Of course, the Ivory Coast says “hold my beer” to Curaçao as you would need to travel over 1,500 kilometers to get to the closest volcano listed in the Global Volcanism Program’s database. Not that eastern Africa lacks volcanoes, but almost all of them are related to hotspots (like Hawai’i) so they usually lie in narrow bands. The Ivory Coast is intersected by none of these and the most prominent evidence of volcanism found in the country is over 2 billion years old!

Ecuador – 68/36/17/12 – El Reventador, Sangay

Did you know that Ecuador only gave up 5 goals across 18 games to qualify for the real World Cup? That is remarkable defense! In the Volcano World Cup, the country shows off the same prowess with a dozen eruptions since 1960 and two volcanoes regularly erupting right now. Some of the largest eruptions of the last 10,000 years happened in Ecuador (Quilatoa, Cotopaxi, Tungurahua) and that is just the volcanoes on South America. Remember, the Galapagos Islands are also part of Ecuador, so all those impressive shield volcanoes like Wolf and Fernandina count here as well. Ecuador has a lot working in its favor.