TERRAIN MORPHOLOGY AS FACTOR OF LOCAL TEMPERATURES DISTRIBUTION IN UKRAINIAN CARPATHIANS

Ukrainian Carpathians like other mountainous areas are susceptible to the modern climate changes manifested mainly in accelerated warming. There are several main mechanisms of the orographic effects on temperature distribution, operating on different scales. The well-known and universally observed cooling with elevation is still often used as an over-simplified model of terrain relation to temperature regime, yet there are other significant orographic effects connected with the position of terrain features respective to incoming solar radiation angle and the large-scale movements of air masses. In Ukrainian Carpathians these effects are manifested mainly in more mild and less continental conditions on south-western macroslope that is also warmer due to larger solar radiation intake. Another important factor of temperature distribution is the formation of near-ground temperature inversions that often emerge in narrow valleys and inter-mountain troughs. The mapping of land surface temperatures can be effectively achieved by applying spatial imagery with thermal infrared bands; in our case, Landsat 8 images allowed to obtain detailed maps of temperature distribution in Bystrytsia river basin for three different seasons of the year. An analysis has been performed of relationships between temperatures and a set of morphometric parameters, by means of raster package and appropriate functions of R software environment. Rather strong negative relationship between elevation and temperature has been revealed in all the three cases. Direct relationship between slope and temperature was not confirmed, while potential incoming solar radiation values for the date and time of the imagery appeared to have a moderate effect on temperature, its effect varying from season to season. Key words: mountain climate; Carpathians; terrain morphology; temperature gradient; spatial analysis.