Slope relaxation following landslides in the Łososina River Basin, Beskid Wyspowy Mts., Poland

The paper presents results from a study of the functioning of slopes in conditions where the dynamic equilibrium has been upset and sliding has been followed by slope relaxation. The research was an attempt to analyze large-scale changes in slope morphology in the Łososina River basin in the Beskid Wyspowy mountain range caused by an extreme rainfall event in 1997. The enormous scale of the sliding process that occurred on the slopes of the Łososina basin provided an opportunity to study the role of mass movements in landform development in mountains of medium height. The paper attempts to summarize the rate and course of slope relaxation processes using geomorphological mapping done from 1997 to 2000. The study tested the hypothesis that following the occurrence of an extreme event, slope relaxation processes will slow down mass movement processes to the point where they stop acting on the slope, and ultimately a new set of slope development processes will emerge.