Monogenetic volcanism is the most common manifestation of volcanism on Earth and many
planets and moons of the Solar System. They are variously organized volcanic forms
reflecting volcanic eruptions that are normally short lived and produce small volume
of eruptive products. Monogenetic volcanism can occur in any geological environment
hence their physical appearance and volcanic geoforms is great despite that their
types have high relative abundance in the whole geosystem. Conceptual framework of
monogenetic volcanism revealed that individual volcanoes are sensitive for the external
conditions which may influence the course of the eruption due to the low volume of
magma involved in most of such volcanism. In extreme cases, the external forces that
are mostly governed by the availability of surface and ground waters can overtake
the shaping of the volcanic eruption styles hence the resulting eruptive products
and geoforms. Intuitively, geodiversity of monogenetic volcanism is expected to be
great, however the way to measure it faces with numerous challenges. One of the most
obvious issues is the small size of such volcanoes that are in magnitude smaller from
the surface manifestation of many other types of geological formation, creating a
challenge to be able to “detect” and effectively distinguish geological varieties
in normal geological mapping scales. This scale problem poses significant challenges
to apply modern technologies such as GIS to create geodiversity maps. In addition,
it has been recognized in many cases that within individual volcanic fields “overlapping”
high value geoheritage sites of monogenetic volcanoes can exist hence to select the
one form, as a geosite requires complex evaluation methods to apply. In this chapter,
after basic introduction to monogenetic volcanism, a summary is given for the recently
identified challenges and their potential solutions.
