Philippine Volcanoes Trivia
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49 free Philippine Volcanoes trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Philippines sits on the Ring of Fire with two dozen active volcanoes, and two of them are celebrities. This quiz gathers trivia about Mayon Volcano, the perfect cone that buried Cagsawa in 1814, and trivia about Taal Volcano, the caldera lake with an island that holds a lake that holds an island. Pinatubo's 1991 eruption, the second-largest of the 20th century, gets its due as well. Fifty questions also cover Kanlaon, Bulusan, Hibok-Hibok, Mount Apo, PHIVOLCS alert levels, the tawilis sardine, the Daragang Magayon legend and the 2020 Taal eruption that dusted Metro Manila with ash. Good for Philippine classrooms, quiz nights and anyone planning a Bicol or Tagaytay trip.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Mayon Volcano stands in which Philippine province?
Albay
Albay. More than a million people live in the province around the volcano, so tens of thousands are moved to safety when an eruption looms.
Q 02Mayon is famous worldwide for which physical feature?
Its near-perfect symmetrical cone
Its near-perfect symmetrical cone comes from eruptions through a single central vent, which pile lava and ash evenly on every side.
Q 03What type of volcano is Mayon?
Stratovolcano
Stratovolcano. Layers of lava and ash have built slopes that steepen to 35 to 40 degrees near the top, far sharper than the gentle profile of a shield volcano.
Q 04As of 2025 Mayon is only a World Heritage candidate, but in 2016 its province gained which international status?
Biosphere reserve
Biosphere reserve. UNESCO cited the province's wildlife, including five of the world's seven sea turtle species, alongside the volcano that towers over it.
Q 05Which volcanic hazard killed dozens of farmers on Mayon's slopes when it erupted without warning in 1993?
Pyroclastic flows
Pyroclastic flows. The first blast lasted only about half an hour, but its avalanches of hot ash and gas caught farmers on the slopes and drove tens of thousands of people from their homes.
Q 06Mayon's most destructive eruption, in February 1814, buried which town?
Cagsawa
Cagsawa. Only the bell tower of its church still rises above the buried town, a ruin kept as a park and as a reminder of the risk of living beside the volcano.
Q 07Roughly how many people died in Mayon's most destructive eruption, in 1814?
About 1,200
About 1,200. Hundreds of townspeople are said to have sheltered in a stone church, only to be overwhelmed there by the hot avalanches and mudflows.
Q 08Mayon's 1814 eruption is thought to have deepened the global chill that followed which larger eruption?
Tambora
Tambora. The Indonesian volcano's 1815 blast was the largest in recorded history, and Mayon's ash is thought to have thickened its haze before the dimmed sun made 1816 the Year Without a Summer.
Q 09Which American agency worked with PHIVOLCS to forecast Pinatubo's 1991 eruption?
USGS
USGS. Its volcanologists and PHIVOLCS read the warning signs in time for mass evacuations, a forecast credited with saving at least 5,000 lives.
Q 10Pinatubo's first major explosion of 1991 fell on which Philippine national holiday?
Independence Day
Independence Day. The June 12 blast was only a prelude: three days later the volcano produced its climactic eruption, the second largest anywhere in the 20th century.
Q 11Which 2006 typhoon triggered Mayon lahars that killed more than 1,000 people?
Durian
Durian, known in the Philippines as Reming. Its downpour swept ash and boulders from that year's eruption down the slopes as mudflows that buried whole villages at the volcano's foot.
Q 12Which indigenous people lived on Pinatubo's forested slopes and were displaced by the 1991 eruption?
Aeta
Aeta. About 20,000 Aeta highlanders lost their homes and fields under the ash, and years later most were still waiting in resettlement camps.
Q 13In the best-known local legend, Mayon rose over what?
A maiden's grave
A maiden's grave. In the usual telling the beautiful Magayon and her lover both die, and Mayon grows from her burial place and takes her name, though another version makes Magayon a jealous uncle buried by a landslide.
Q 21Taal's greatest recorded eruption, in 1754, blocked which river, Taal Lake's only outlet to the sea?
Pansipit
Pansipit. With its outlet choked by debris the lake rose and drowned lakeshore towns, and over the following centuries its once salty water turned fresh.
Q 22Mayon, Bulusan and Iriga all rise in which region of Luzon?
Bicol
Bicol. All three belong to one volcanic arc along the peninsula, yet they behave very differently: Mayon erupts every few years, while Iriga has barely stirred in centuries.
Q 23Which volcanic hazard devastated villages on Taal Lake's shores in 1965?
A base surge
A base surge. The ground-hugging cloud of ash and mud raced outward from the vent at hurricane speed, and geologists named it after the similar blast clouds of nuclear tests.
Q 14PHIVOLCS monitors Mayon from a provincial headquarters on which rise near Legazpi?
Ligñon Hill
Ligñon Hill. The lookout is itself an old cinder cone on Mayon's flank, and its summit park gives visitors the same sweeping view of the volcano that the scientists watch.
Q 15The ruins of the church buried by Mayon in 1814 belonged to which religious order?
Franciscans
Franciscans. They first built the church in 1587; Dutch raiders burned it in 1636, and the rebuilt one stood for less than a century before the eruption took it.
Q 16Taal Volcano lies in which province, about 50 km south of Manila?
Batangas
Batangas. The famous views of it, though, are from the city of Tagaytay, which sits just across the provincial border in Cavite.
Q 17Settlement on Taal's Volcano Island is prohibited because the whole island is officially a what?
Permanent Danger Zone
Permanent Danger Zone. Every one of Taal's recorded eruptions has come from this 5-km-wide island, and PHIVOLCS warns that explosions there can come without warning.
Q 18Taal Lake fills which kind of volcanic basin?
A caldera
A caldera. The basin formed when the ground collapsed after huge prehistoric eruptions, and Volcano Island later grew in the middle of it, a small volcano inside a far older and bigger one.
Q 19Vulcan Point won fame as what feature of Taal Volcano?
An islet in the crater lake
An islet in the crater lake. That earned it fame as an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island, since Volcano Island rises from Taal Lake on Luzon.
Q 20What does the S in PHIVOLCS stand for?
Seismology
Seismology. The agency began in 1952 as a volcano commission and gained its last letter only in 1984, when earthquake monitoring was moved to it from the weather bureau.
Q 24Which cinder cone on Taal, visible from Tagaytay, erupted in 1707 and 1715?
Binintiang Malaki
Binintiang Malaki. For a few decades Taal's eruptions broke out at vents on the island's edge like this one, then returned to the main crater, and the cone has been quiet ever since.
Q 25Taal is one of the world's Decade Volcanoes, a list chosen for what reason?
They threaten large populations
They threaten large populations. The name comes from the United Nations' disaster-reduction decade of the 1990s, not from how often the volcanoes erupt.
Q 26Taal Lake is the only home of which freshwater sardine?
Tawilis
Tawilis. Its ancestors are thought to have been sea fish trapped as the lake turned fresh, and overfishing of this single population has put it on the IUCN's endangered list.
Q 27Taal Lake is home to one of the world's rarest what, the freshwater Hydrophis semperi?
Sea snakes
Sea snakes. Its ancestors are thought to have been marine snakes cut off when eruptions sealed the lake from the sea, which makes it one of very few sea snakes living wholly in fresh water.
Q 28Taal's January 2020 eruption began as which type of eruption before turning magmatic the next day?
Phreatic
Phreatic. The first blasts were steam explosions, yet within hours their ash had shut Manila's airport, and before dawn the next day lava was fountaining from the crater.
Q 29How high did PHIVOLCS raise Taal’s alert status on the first evening of the 2020 eruption?
Level 4
Level 4. In a matter of hours PHIVOLCS took the alert from Level 1 to one step below the maximum, warning that an explosive eruption could come within hours or days.
Q 30What happened to Taal’s Main Crater Lake right after the 2020 eruption began?
Its water disappeared
Its water disappeared within days, as satellite radar confirmed, and scientists think its contact with rising magma helped drive the first explosions.