Thematic mapping of avalanche-threatened areas

Providing avalanche-threatened areas with modern thematic data mapping is an urgent task. It will allow us to predict and prevent catastrophic consequences of snow avalanches. The purpose of this paper is to create a set of thematic raster maps of Polonyna Borzhava mountain ridge, including a physical map, a map of relative avalanche hazards, and a map of avalanche paths, on the basis of analysing certain morphometric and environmental factors. Modelling and analysing morphometric parameters of the ridge surface were implemented, and they were represented as factors of avalanche occurrence. The areas with consistent snow avalanche occurrence in the Polonyna Borzhava mountain ridge were allocated by combining cartographic material, remote sensing data, statistical meteorological data and some geomorphometric data about the surface in one unified geographic information system. Thematic mapping of snow avalanches of Polonyna Borzhava ridge has been implemented in the scale of 1:50000. The resulting thematic maps can be used when developing winter tourist routes.