Zastosowanie metod dendrochronologicznych w badaniach lawin śnieżnych

Abstract

Despite their strength, snow avalanches leave a very diverse record in the environment. For this reason, the reconstruction of the occurrence, time and magnitude of avalanches is a really demanding task. It can only be performed in places where avalanches reach forests, leaving their marks in the macroscale (lowering the upper timberline) and microscale (damaging individual trees). Appropriately adapted dendrochronological methods allow dating the avalanche events. Combining the dendrochronological analyses with other techniques enables to obtain a multi-dimensional image of ava-lanche events. The application of the basic dendrogeomorphological techniques is discussed on the example of the results of the research from the Biały Żleb chute located in the High Tatras. The obtained reconstruction of avalanche activity covers more than 100 years and points to five major avalanche events in the period from 1912 to 2009. The employment of GIS techniques allowed to extend the reconstruction by a spatial element indicating the range of the past events.