River valleys - the trouble of the physico-geographical regionalization

W artykule poruszono zagadnienie specyficznej „roli” dolin rzecznych w regionalizacji fizycznogeograficznej. Przedstawiono przykłady trudności związanych z uwzględnieniem dolin rzecznych w jednostkach regionalnych wysokiej rangi. Zaprezentowano prawidłowości „zaniku” informacji o dolinach rzecznych wraz z przechodzeniem do wyższych poziomów regionalizacji.River valleys are the components of mountain ridges, morainic plateaus, plateau, and other plains that are on their own considered as not river valleys. River valleys characterize the functioning of the environment and play an important role of pathways of material migration. On the other hand, „not river valley landscapes” reflect environmental structural features well. For this reasons river valleys will always be a problem for physico-geographical regionalization procedures, regardless of the chosen regionalization method. Examples of various types of such difficulties are showu in this article. These difficulties are related to inclusions of small segments of river valleys into regions of higher rank. Small segments of river valleys are included in many ways into "not valley" greater regions - in accordance with generally accepted regionalization methods (fig. 1, fig. 2, fig. 3, fig. 4). Merging small segments of river valleys into greater "valley" regions would cause disintegration of traditional network of large regional units. Another manifestation of described problems is an underestimation of the surface of the valley landscapes on the physico-geographical regionalization maps. Share of the area of subregions with "valleys names" in the total area of any physico-geographical region is smaller than in a real situation (tab. 1). Valley landscapes are troublesome objects to mark on the map, due to their specific shape and often a small surface. Wherefore they are the first to be a subject to the cartographic generalization. This makes it impossible to use regionalization maps to properly determine the pathways of material migration and the functioning of the environment