  We study exact, volume-preserving diffeomorphisms that have heteroclinic
connections between a pair of normally hyperbolic invariant manifolds. We
develop a general theory of lobes, showing that the lobe volume is given by an
integral of a generating form over the primary intersection, a subset of the
heteroclinic orbits. Our definition reproduces the classical action formula in
the planar, twist map case. For perturbations from a heteroclinic connection,
the lobe volume is shown to reduce, to lowest order, to a suitable integral of
a Melnikov function.
