Influence of natural hazards on the infrastructure facilities of Pokut Carpathians

Abstract

This article presents the results of own field research, which determined the impact of natural hazards on the infrastructure facilities of Pokut Carpathians. Based on the decoding of space images, three types of land were determined: forests, meadows and built-up areas, which occupy about a fifth of 19.3%. A more detailed deciphering of the territory was carried out in the key part of Bukovets-Ritskyi landscape, where a few more types of land were distinguished: forests, meadows, cuttings, plough lands, buildings, dirt roads and asphalt roads. The studied landscape is representative for Pokut Carpathians, buildings are placed evenly throughout the territory, and not concentrated in river valleys, as in other regions of the Ukrainian Carpathians. In addition to a peculiar settlement in this landscape, frequent dangerous physical and geographical processes of a geological and hydrological nature, which are characteristic of Pokut Carpathians, are recorded in this landscape – these are landslides, mudslides, erosion and floods. Eight landslides were recorded on the Bukovets-Ritsky ridge and two on the slopes of Ternoshora Mount. Lateral and bottom erosion and floods develop intensively in the bottoms of rivers, which provoke the occurrence of erosion, and linear erosion is often manifested in steep banks. All these processes, taking into account the settlement of the territory, lead to the destruction and neutralization of infrastructure facilities. Commercial buildings, roads, bridges, power lines and agricultural lands are most often destroyed. Analyzing the influence of natural hazards on the infrastructure facilities of Pokut Carpathians, it was found that the studied territory is characterized by a moderate category of influence of dangerous physical and geographical processes on the infrastructure of the region. The key area has been assigned a strong category of damage from the effects of natural hazards.