EN
The cartographic study included numerous maps of the investigated area, to begin with the map drawn by Eilhard Lubin in 1618. For detailed analysis nineteenth - and twentieth-century maps were used, scaled 1:100 000 at least. Photointerpretative analysis were based on black-an-white, panchromatic air pictures taken in 1967, in the scale of 1:10 000. Those pictures do not include the lower part of the river valley. Besides, much archival material was examined. The lower and the middle part of the Słupia river is characterized by two terraced fluvial levels-a flood plain with numerous traces of meandering and a terrace situated above, bearing marks of the activity of braided beds and showing aeolian forms. The higher morphologic levels in the valley have a fluvioglacial character but a detailed evaluation of the photointerpretative features of their surface is difficult owing to large forests. Along the whole valley there frequently occur sectors which have the character of glacier troughs or of depressions of another origin, which can hardly be drained because they are surrounded by morainic deposits. This appears in the pictures as a darker phototone (field investigations show a higher level of ground water and large quantities of organogenic deposits) and a greater concentration of meander forms. Maps of the ninetieth and twentieth century have helped to date some of the more recent oxbows in a rather precise way. Most of them were cut offdduring flood-control work. The analysis of the maps has also helped to determine the side-movement rate of some meanders. In some cases, at the beginning of the twentieth century, it reached several metres yearly. It has also been stated that meanders neighbouring a fast developing bend frequently remain stabile. It proves that different sections of the river have adapted themselves individually to hydrologic conditions which changed naturally or artificially (flood-control and drainage work, hydrotechnical constructions). The comparison of information obtained through the analysis of cartographic material with the contents of air pictures and field investigations shows a curious fact: many meanders cut off in the latest 150 years have been hardly preserved. They can be hardly observed both on the ground and in the air pictures. They are usually not deeply filled and the deposits are the same as in the flood plain surrounding the palaeomeander. Only the forms which undercut higher morphoIogic levels are readable.