Most likely some sloppiness or rushing through when it comes to layers, alpha mask or just general picture properties of your terrain picture, there's not really much else to go on.
I'd honestly suggest checking up on a tutorial that clearly explains how you create a heightmap picture, it could be healthy so if you got the time take a shot at this one(I guess you are using PS or Gimp:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTO8tyhSQPUIf you still have issues, open your finished heightmap .png picture in your photo editing software. Save it down as a .jpg picture. Load the .jpg picture that you just saved that still is the heightmap, and turn it back into a .png(make sure it's the right size), then try to load your "new" .png instead.
Some people have had this picture in the past, and it usually leads to them just using the wrong properties/preferences for their .png pictures, causing the game to crash.