Рельєф стартових зон виникнення снігових лавин на Чорногірському хребті Українських Карпат

Ukrainian Carpathians is the area which is an extremely attractive for development of tourism and recreation activities. However, one of the significant hazards in this area is avalanches and as result can be devastating damages and even leads to life losses, therefore, the study and forecasting of snow avalanches is very important. The purpose of this research is to analyze the most dangerous pattern of the Chornohora ridge and using designated software product to visualize places with most likely conditions for avalanche appearance and critical snow amount accumulation, i.e. their starting zones. There are three main stages for avalanche path, or morphological units: starting zone, track and snowgatering zone. Change the configuration and conditions in all of those three areas defines the type and possibility of avalanches in the particular area. Therefore, studying of terrain relief is the main factor of layout pattern, we have to pay special attention to the study of the topography (relief) of the starting zone. Maps with places of possible occurrence of snow avalanches were made about 30 years ago and now are basically outdated, but now, making use of the geoinformation technologies allows to modernize and visualize most likely possible starting zones of snow avalanches and to obtain relevant quantitative, mathematically approved parameters. The software package Surfer, which allows you to visualize avalanche pattern of the area of our interest in our case was used. DEM as a part of Chornohora ridge was created, the location of snow avalanches starting zones with high possibility of two types of development –gutter and planar were marked. Also this 3D terrain model allows to spot the possible accumulation of forces and conditions for avalanches occurrence and to predict direction of their movement. This research made it possible to render a visually represent of avalanche dangerous areas and areas of possible origin of avalanches, enable to create the models of avalanche development as a processes depending on meteorological, botanical, and morphometric factors. The results of the study for the tourism and recreational industry, and also to develop and design of different tourist routes, construction of recreation objects and to predict the occurrence of snow avalanches can be used.