Applicability, advantages and limitations of a range of methods applied to determine large wood dynamics in Kamienica Stream and the Czarny Dunajec River, Polish Carpathians, are discussed. Results of a 6-year-long monitoring suggest an increased rate of wood recruitment to Kamienica Stream caused by recent bark beetle infestation of the spruce forests in the valley. However, both monitoring of wood transport and wood inventories indicate that the mobility of large wood in the stream is low and can increase only during major floods. Thus flood hazard to downstream valley reaches potentially resulting from the considerable amounts of large wood stored in the upper stream reach is limited. In the Czarny Dunajec, wood inventories, a tracking experiment with logs tagged with radio transmitters, and numerical modelling indicated high potential for wood transport in the narrow river reaches formed by channelization or channel incision, and high potential for wood deposition in the wide, multi-thread channel. Vegetative regeneration of living willow wood considerably reduces its remobilization by subsequent floods. Efficient transport of large wood along narrow river reaches implicates that during floods substantial amounts of wood may be delivered from distant sources to the channel sections located downstream of the narrow reaches. Wide, multi-thread reaches operate as natural wood traps, considerably limiting further transfer of wood to vulnerable sites/reaches.