Match 1: Ecuador v. Norway

Ecuador Volcano Fun Facts:

• Guagua Pichincha is one of my favorite volcano names but did you know it was built on an older volcano that is called Rucu Pichincha?
• Ecuador shares a volcano with Colombia: Chiles-Cerro Negro volcanic complex. It has an even longer name (Cerro Negro de Mayasquer and Chiles volcanoes) and is monitored by organizations in both countries.
• Four volcanoes in the Galápagos have erupted in the 21st century: Wolf, Sierra Negra, Fernandina and Cerro Azul.
• Ecuador is home to a volcano named Ecuador.

Norway Volcano Fun Facts:

• Bouvet, in the southern Atlantic Ocean, is almost entirely covered in glaciers.
• One of the few places not covered in glaciers is called Cape Meteor. The lava there was dated to ~2000 years ago.
• Norway’s other Holocene volcano, Beerenburg on Jan Mayen is also mostly covered in glaciers.
• The population of Jan Mayen is mostly military and meteorologists — and most of them aren’t year round residents anyway.

Match 2: South Korea v. Japan

South Korea Volcano Fun Facts:

• Not many things cross the border with North Korea, but Ch’uga-ryong is a volcanic lava field that traverses the DMZ. It likely hasn’t erupted in a few hundred thousand years.
• A Surtseyan eruption in the shallow sea around Jeju Island created the beautiful Seongsan Ilchulbong. It is a ring left by explosive mixing of lava and seawater.
• The movie Ashfall was made in South Korea. Released in 2019, it depicts a massive eruption of Changbaishan (Paektu) in North Korea.
• Apparently they nuke the volcano to save the Korean peninsula in Ashfall. This is a categorically bad idea. This is a tsunami, too. I should likely watch this film.

Japan Volcano Fun Facts:

• Some of Japan’s volcanoes are technically “administered by Russia” thanks to World War II and the lack of a final treaty between what was the USSR and Japan. So, Japan’s northernmost volcano could be Rakkibetsudake on Iturup Island or Shiretoko on Hokkaido.
• The largest known eruption ever in Japan is the Nohi Rhyolite/Gero Ash-Flow Sheet that erupted more than 7,000 cubic kilometers of volcanic debris, but that was 70-72 million years ago.
• The largest geologically recent was from the Aso Caldera around 87,000 years ago and it was ~1,000-1,800 cubic kilometers.
• The 1924 eruption of the so-called “Submarine Volcano NNE of Iriomotejima” is possibly the largest Holocene eruption in Japan. It produced 1-2 meter pumice clasts that drifted across the western Pacific.

Match 3: Colombia v. Cabo Verde

Colombia Volcano Fun Facts:

• Colombia might not be known for large explosive eruptions but there is evidence for such eruptions. Where exactly they came from is still up in the air but some deposits are over 100 meters thick.
• Colombia currently has 10 volcanoes on an elevated alert status meaning unrest above “background”.
• The indigenous people living near Tolima had legends that appear to capture oral histories of eruptions from the area. In fact, the final resting place for one legendary character (Nacuco) is thought to be Cerro Machín.
• There are also mud volcanoes in Colombia, some of them explosive. Such an explosion happened in San Juan de Urabá in Antioquia in February 2026.

Cabo Verde Volcano Fun Facts:

• Although Cabo Verde is a chain of volcanic islands, it is much less active than the likes the Canary Islands or Hawai’i. Beyond Fogo, there is only one other volcano that likely erupted during the Holocene: Brava.
• One study pegged the production of molten rock in the Cape Verde hotspot at ~0.026 cubic kilometers per year.
• Much like the Canary Islands, the Cabo Verde volcanoes have produced large landslides due to collapses in the past. A landslide and tsunami occurred around 73,000 years ago from Fogo.
• Chã das Caldeiras is one of the only human settlements within the caldera of an active volcano. People returned quickly after the 2014-15 eruptions from Fogo.

Match 4: Türkiye v. New Zealand

Türkiye Volcano Fun Facts:

• I mention this mostly for the name but the Hasandag-Keçiboyduran Volcanic Complex produced lava domes and pyroclastic flows during the Holocene.
• The last eruption from Ararat in eastern Türkiye in 1840 may have coincided with a landslide caused by an earthquake centred near Ararat.
• Ararat has also produced very large basaltic lava flow eruptions, one of which erupted more than 3 cubic kilometers of lava. These were likely fed by a deep magma body at ~20 kilometers that itself may have held 13,000 cubic kilometers of magma.
• Some older volcanic deposits have created conical towers that were carved into habitations in the Cappadocia region of Türkiye.

New Zealand Volcano Fun Facts:

• Although we think of the volcanoes of New Zealand as being on the North Island, a majority actually lie north of there along the Kermadec arc. This extends ~1,900 kilometers north to Monowai.
• There have been at least 3 known eruptions in the New Zealand portion of the Kermadec arc since 2000: Rumble III (2008), Havre (2012) and Monowai (2014). They were all submarine eruptions.
• The city of Auckland is built right on top of an eponymous volcanic field that has erupted in geologically recent times. The last eruption was in 1446 and built Rangitoto Island.
• Some of the most recent activity in New Zealand didn’t happen in the main Taupō volcanic zone. Instead, the 1800 eruption of Taranaki occurred ~120 kilometers to the west of Ruapehu and Tongariro.