QUANTIFICAÇÃO E ANÁLISE DA GEODIVERSIDADE APLICADA AO GEOTURISMO NA ÁREA DE PROTEÇÃO AMBIENTAL SUL DA REGIÃO METROPOLITANA DE BELO HORIZONTE, MINAS GERAIS

Abstract

The Southern Environmental Protection Area of the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte (APA Sul da RMBH), located in the Iron Quadrangle (Quadrilátero Ferrífero), Minas Gerais, is an important sustainable management conservation unit. This paper aimed to quantify the study area's geodiversity so that locations with higher potential for geoturism were selected. The quantification's mapping was based on natural diversity indexes and geoprocessing techniques. Geology, pedology, geomorphology and hydrogeology maps in the scale of 1:50000 were used. The geodiversity index was calculated considering the number of of features of the following variables: lithology, geological age, soil categories, landscape units, morphological units and hydrogeological units. The geodiversity quantification summary map was reclassified in four categories: very high, high, medium and low. The larger part of the area is classified as high geodiversityand this category is well distributed throughout the entire APA. The very high geodiversity category is spatially concentrated in four distinct regions. In each one of those regions a geosite was selected and described in relation to its potential for geoturism.