Streams characteristics of the Paraopeba River Watershed, Minas Gerais, Brazil

The watershed is a depression on the land’s surface, which is surrounded by higher land and drained by a river and its various tributaries. The streams are the morphologic elements of a basin that help draining the runoff reaching the Earth’s surface as rainfall, into a main water course. The present research had the objective of studying the hydrologic structuring of Paraopeba River Watershed located in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The watershed was divided in 66 subbasins and geomorphological characteristics were calculated, namely those relevant for the assessment of hydrology and sediment transport. The materials and methods involved a geographic information system coupled with aerial photography interpretation methods that allowed a detailed geomorphologic analysis, irrespective of the large area of Paraopeba basin. The longitudinal profiles of water courses enabled to understand the three-dimensional development of stream networks while stream directions were linked to water-resources management. The results also exposed a relationship between landscape change and dynamic interactions between the physical and material environments triggered by natural and cultural forces. The actual shape of Paraopeba River watershed depends on the flowing streams and was strongly influenced by geologic heterogeneity. The singular features and processes that created a subbasin could be related with specific physical and environmental settings, that differed from place to place, whereas different landscape types were recognized as well as different landscape regions.