Morphometric characterization as a tool to control flood and landslide risks in a portion of the Manhuaçu River Basin, MG, Brazil

Abstract

This aims to evaluate the morphometric parameters of the Manhuaçu River watershed and their influence on erosive processes. The study was conducted upstream from the city of Manhuaçu, where the morphometric characterization of 23 sub-basins was made using relief. The morphometric parameters were submitted to Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to indicate the most significant. The hypsometric integral was applied to all sub-basins to analyze their stage of geological development. Among the 23 sub-basins evaluated, there was a variation of 1.32 to 243.94 km² of the basin area. The most significant morphometric parameters in the evaluation of ACP were: drainage intensity, basin axis, perimeter and altimetric amplitude. The Manhuaçu River sub-basin has a large difference in the value of the hypsometric integral, ranging from 0.23 to 0.78 for sub-basins 22 and 17 respectively. Among the sub-basins analyzed, sub-basins 9, 10 and 23 can be highlighted because they present the juvenile stage, high drainage network and altimetric amplitude. Finally, it can be concluded that this allows to subsidize the choice of priority sub-basins for management and effective for hydrological studies.