The mountain environment presents a great geomorphological complexity due to the high variability on short distances of topography, geology and landcover, which leads to the occurrence of microclimates and significantly different local effects. Through its specific high relief energy, the mountain area is the prone to the rapid manifestation of high intensity processes which can turn into natural hazards and risk factors to people and societies. The importance of knowledge on natural processes in the mountains increases in the context of climate changes to which the high mountain areas are highly sensitive.
In the present, the mountain geomorphology studies within AGR cover the following research directions:
Assessment of the evolution, the magnitude and frequency of periglacial pocesses such as weathering, frost heave, creep, solifluction, periglacial sorting;
Morphometric description and large scale spatial distribution analysis of periglacial landforms such as rock walls, debris fans and aprons, rockglaciers, turf hummocks, solifluction teraces and lobes, debris flows;
Quantification and modeling of topographic (altitude, slope, exposure) and climatic (temperature, precipitations, humidity, wind regime) control factors weight in the dynamics of periglacial landforms and processes;
Mapping of alpine and low-altitude permafrost in the Romanian Carpathians and assessment of ontrol factors;
Paleoenvironmental reconstruction based on lakes sediments archives analysis, relict periglacial landforms characteristics and glacial sediments deposits analysis (including absolute and relative dating);
Mountain risk and hazards such as snow avalanches, rockfalls and debris flows: events inventory, processes evolution, critical trigger thresholds, warning systems development.