Impact of Mass Movements on Landscape and Landform Transformation in the Beskidy Mountains—From Gravitational Collapse to Recent Times

Impact of mass movementsMass movement on morphological development of the Outer (Flysch) Carpathians (Beskidy Mountains) is significant, and their landforms have been transformed by gravitational displacements since the stage of the gravitational collapseGravitational collapse of the orogen (NeogeneNeogene) through the Quaternary stage of relief evolution until the present, partly under the conditions of increasing human impactHuman impact. At the stage of the gravitational collapseGravitational collapse the rock massifs, somewhere of the size of mountain ranges or large hills underwent gravitational displacements. Along with the tectonic mélanges developed during gravitational displacements, river valleys were formed. During the Quaternary stage of relief development, characteristic elements of the gravitationally induced morphology and landscape of the Beskidy Mountains were created, such as concave, convex or convex-concave slopes, rock walls and trenches, block fieldsBlockfield (block field), torsTor, landslide lakes, and fensFen. A comprehensive analysis of mass movements shows that the size of slopes transformed by gravitational displacements during the NeogeneNeogene and Quaternary is much larger than it was previously considered. In turn, the present-day landslides, although commonly formed after catastrophic rainfalls, contribute to the transformation of relief only at local scale. Most of them are shallow landslides that are quickly degraded and vanish.