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Piping has been recognized as an important geomorphic, soil erosion and hydrologic process. It seems that it is far more widespread than it has often been supposed. However, our knowledge about piping dynamics and its quantification currently relies on a limited number of data for mainly loess‐derived areas and marl badlands. Therefore, this research aimed to recognize piping dynamics in mid‐altitude mountains under a temperate climate, where piping occurs in Cambisols, not previously considered as piping‐prone soils. It has been expressed by the estimation of erosion rates due to piping and elongation of pipes in the Bereźnica Wyżna catchment in the Bieszczady Mountains, eastern Carpathians (305 ha, 188 collapsed pipes). The research was based on the monitoring of selected piping systems (1971–1974, 2013–2016). Changes in soil loss vary significantly between different years (up to 27.36 t ha−1 yr−1), as well as between the mean short‐term erosion rate (up to 13.10 t ha−1 yr−1), and the long‐term (45 years) mean of 1.34 t ha−1 yr−1. The elongation of pipes also differs, from no changes to 36 m during one year. The mean total soil loss is 48.8 t ha−1 in plots, whereas in the whole studied catchment it is 2.0 t ha−1. Hence, piping is both spatially and temporally dependent. The magnitude of piping in the study area is at least three orders of magnitude higher than surface erosion rates (i.e. sheet and rill erosion) under similar land use (grasslands), and it is comparable to the magnitude of surface soil erosion on arable lands. It means that piping constitutes a significant environmental problem and, wherever it occurs, it is an important, or even the main, sediment source. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mountain protected areas are characterized by high biodiversity, which makes it a great challenge for managers to maintain a balance between their use and the stability of natural ecosystems. Maintaining that balance is particularly difficult in areas with high tourism pressure. The expected volume of tourist traffic should be considered at the planning stage of the tourist infrastructure development process. Insufficient capacity of tourist infrastructure can lead to environmental degradation, which is hard, or at times impossible, to repair. In our research, we identified patterns of tourist footpath and road functioning in an environmentally protected area with high volumes of tourist traffic. Data from geomorphologic mapping was analyzed in order to identify tourist footpath and road structures in the Tatra National Park (TNP). Fieldwork was conducted in several stages between 1995 and 2019. Orthophotomaps from the years 1977, 2009, 2017 and 2019 were used to identify and compare degraded zones along selected tourist footpaths. Degraded zones were defined as areas surrounding a footpath or tourist road with a mean width larger than or equal to 10 meters, with heavily damaged or completely removed vegetation and exposed, weathered cover, where geomorphic processes that would not take place under normal conditions are readily observable. The examined tourist footpaths and roads vary in terms of their morphometric parameters. Research has shown important differences between mean and maximum footpath width as well as maximum incision depth for the forest zone versus the subalpine and alpine zones. A lack of differences in these parameters was noted between the alpine and subalpine zones. Research has shown that an increase in the surface area of degraded zones found adjacent to tourist footpaths occurred in all the studied geo-ecological zones in the study period. However, the largest increase occurred atop wide ridgelines found in the alpine zone. Degraded zones may be an indication of exceeding the tourist carrying capacity of a mountain tourist area. Mass tourism in TNP contributes to the formation of degraded zones adjacent to footpaths, whose continuous evolution may lead to irreversible changes in local relief.

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The paper is an attempt to review the state of current knowledge and discussion on the evolution and typology of valley and river channel systems in Poland. Contemporary landscapes of valley systems and river channel systems reflect the overlap of multiple natural and anthropogenic factors. Among them, climate changes and regional morphotectonic and morphogenetic determinants are of crucial importance. Over the last decades, these landscapes have undergone substantial transformations, among others as a result of climate change and as a consequence of changing hydrological conditions, land use, as well as a result of increasing human interference in river channel and valley systems. It thus follows from the circumstances that attempts are made to classify different evolutionary types and subtypes of river valleys and different types of contemporary river channel patterns and floodplains that reflect complex and often overlapping natural and anthropogenic conditions.