Volcanic seismicity is fundamental for monitoring and investigating volcanic systems, their structure and processes that occur therein. Volcanoes are very complex objects, where both the pronounced heterogeneity and topography can modify the recorded signals to a great extent. In source inversion work, one of the challenges is to capture the effect of small scale heterogeneities in order to remove complex path effects from seismic data. This requires high resolution imagery, which is a significant challenge in heterogeneous volcanoes. If not removed, the path effect signature may significantly alter our interpretation of the seismic source location and mechanism. In addition, the link between the variety of physical processes beneath volcanoes and their seismic response (or lack of) is often not well known, leading to large uncertainties in the interpretation of volcano dynamics based on the seismic observations. Taking into account all these complexities, many standard techniques for seismic analysis may fail to produce breakthrough results.

In order to address the outlined challenges, this session aims to bring together seismologists, volcano and geothermal seismologists, wave propagation and source modellers, working on different aspects of volcano seismology including: (i) seismicity catalogues, statistics & spatio-temporal evolution of seismicity, (ii) seismic wave propagation & scattering, (iii) new developments in volcano imagery, (iii) seismic source inversions, and (iv) seismic time-lapse monitoring. Contribution on controlled geothermal systems in volcanic environments are also welcome.
By considering interrelationships in these complementary seismological areas, we aim to build up a coherent picture of the latest advances and outstanding challenges in volcano seismology.