Hills, Gravelly Floodplains and Peat Bogs of the Podhale—A Unique Landscape Mosaic Between the Tatra, the Beskidy and the Pieniny Mountains

The Podhale region is located between the Tatra Mountains, the Pieniny and the Beskidy Mountains in southern Poland. Its northern part—the intramontane Orawa–Nowy Targ Basin—and its immediate surroundings represent an unusual landscape diversity resulting from the geological history of the surrounding regions, a legacy of Pleistocene glaciations in the Tatra Mountains and a relatively recent but pervasive effect of human activity in the region. Wedged into the region is the Pieniny KlippenKlippen Belt with isolated carbonate rocky hills, which contrast with flyschFlysch hills to the south and the flat basin floor covered with a succession of glaciofluvialGlaciofluvial (glacifluvial, fluvioglacial)–alluvial fanAlluvial fan terraces formed by rivers draining the Tatra Mountains. Severe climate conditions together with the occurrence of a poorly permeable layer of silty, loessLoess-like deposits formed in the Pleistocene allowed for the development of once extensive, and now fragmented peatland on the basin floor. Finally, human impactsHuman impact have led to the transformation of fluvialFluvial systems which now span an unusual range of river styles from island- and bar-braided morphologies functioning in relatively natural manner to regulated and incised, bedrock channelsChannelbedrock. This diverse region also contains an extensive sedimentary record of the evolution of the surrounding mountain ranges and the post-glacial palaeoenvironmental history of the area.