**1. Introduction**

Heritage is a legacy from the past. It includes architectural heritage, art heritage, cultural heritage, as well as geological heritage. Geological heritage (or geoheritage) is the legacy of the Earth that has preserved the story, at all scales, of its inception and history in terms of rock types, major geological structures, history of Life (in fossils), and many other features. In detail, Geoheritage resolves down to the identification, categorisation, and preservation of significant Earth geological features, and is recognised as important globally, as reflected in various international and intra-national bodies set up for conservation, with agreements, conventions, and inter-governmental initiatives [1–4].

To date, however, Geoheritage has mostly focused on medium and large-scale features and cliff faces of significant geology and, in some cases, geological phenomena at the crystal scale [5]. Examples of recognised sites of geoheritage significance include columnar basalt, Isle of Staffa, Scotland [6], chevron folds, Millook Haven, England [7], the Silurian and Devonian unconformity at Siccar Point, Scotland [8], the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary (K/T contact) at Gubbio, Italy [9], Cambrian fossils, Burgess Shale, Canada [10], the Precambrian Ediacara fauna, Rawnsley Quartzite, South Australia [11], and Uluru, a very large inselberg of geological (and cultural) importance in central Australia [12]. Generally, geological features at the sub-global scale, involving 1000s of kilometres, unless partly integrated into large-scale geoparks, are not included as geoheritage sites: examples include entire mountain chains such as The Himalayas and The Andes that formed by tectonic plate collisions, or extensive (subcontinental-scale) sand-dominated deserts (*e.g.*, the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia), extensive plains/plateaux formed by lava outpourings (*e.g.*, the Deccan Traps [Deccan Plateau], India), island arcs, and extensive inland-located volcanic chains (such as the Cosgrove hotspot track [13] in eastern Australia or, in our terms, the Cosgrove Volcano Chain, the subject of this Chapter). Exceptions to this are the 2300-km-long Great Barrier Reef offshore from eastern Australia, and Shark Bay (150 km x 100 km), both World Heritage Sites and with geoheritage as a component of their nominated values [14–17].

Brocx & Semeniuk developed the Geoheritage Tool-kit [18], a classification system to categorise and assess sites of geoheritage significance (**Figure 1**), and a

### **Figure 1.**

*Diagram showing the scope of geoheritage in terms of its conceptual categories, its scales of application, and potential levels of significance (modified from Brocx & Semeniuk 2007, with an emphasis on volcanology).*

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**Figure 2.**

*method of evaluation is semi-quantitative.*

*A Globally Significant Potential Megascale Geopark: The Eastern Australian Mantle Hotspot…*

semi-quantitative evaluation method to determine their International, National, State-wide to Regional, or Local significance (**Figure 2**) [1]. This system has been adopted in other countries and in different geological contexts [18–20]. Brocx & Semeniuk also addressed spatial scale in categorising sites of geoheritage value and identified/defined the small, medium, and large scales of reference

*Diagrammatic representation of the levels of significance applicable to volcanic geoheritage features (modified from Brocx & Semeniuk 2007, with an emphasis on vulcanology). A: International; B: National; C: State-wide to regional; and D: Local. Definitions (after Brocx & Semeniuk 2007) are embodied in the diagram. This* 

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.97839*
