Rock glaciers in the Western and High Tatra Mountains, Western Carpathians

ABSTRACT

A detailed map of rock glaciers at a scale of 1 : 40 000 is produced for the Western and High Tatra Mts., Western Carpathians, based on remotely sensed mapping. We inventoried a total of 383 rock glaciers, covering a total area of 13.84 km². Most rock glaciers (85 %) are considered relict (without permafrost). These landforms have an average lower limit of 1684 m asl and occupy a total area of 12.50 km². In contrast, intact rock glaciers (containing permafrost) cover a total area of 1.34 km² and their average lower limit is located at 1986 m asl, which is 56 m above the previously suggested lower limit of discontinuous permafrost. The inventory adds new information about rock-glacier occurrence in the European high-mountain areas and improves the understanding of present and past environmental conditions in the region.

KEYWORDS:

• Rock glaciers
• inventory
• Western and High Tatra Mts
• Carpathians
• Slovakia
• Poland

Software

The mapping, digitizing, analyses of DEM and map compilation were all carried out using ESRI ArcMap 10.3. Final merger of vector and raster map elements was done in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.

Data availability

The shapefiles of rock-glacier outlines and contributing areas are available on request by the authors. Data users are requested to inform the data owners about the planned activities and invite them to contribute to any work that would lead to a co-authorship.

Acknowledgements

We would like to sincerely thank Marek Křížek for selfless financial support with payment of an article publishing charge. We also thank Bieke Cattoor, Daniel Falaschi and especially Andreas Kellerer-Pirklbauer for their thorough reviews that helped us to substantially improve both the article and the map. The Associate Editor, Jan-Christoph Otto, and the Editor-in-Chief, Mike J. Smith, are thanked for their editorial assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Tomáš Uxa http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9911-6529

Peter Mida http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8847-9615

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Charles University [grant numbers GAUK 1312214; SVV 260438].