Ancient Structures, Recent Tectonics: Different Controls in Relief Evolution in the Region of High Quartzitic Crests of Southern Mantiqueira

Abstract

The high crests of Southern Mantiqueira appear as structures scalloped by the drainage network that indirectly demands the Atlantic Ocean appearing as a morphostructural unit whose geomorphogenesis combines cliffs erosive retraction to morphothectonic diastrophic processes enclosing a geomorphological system of high complexity where the neotectonic effects are superimposed to the regional geomorphological expressions forged in old structures reactivated during the Continental rift of Southeastern of Brazil . Based on methodological approaches focused on morphostructural and morphothectonic interpretations the research disclosed here identified important aspects of the active tectonics acting on the evolution of the regional relief whose spatiality is established by base surfaces, by drainage configuration and lineaments pattern by the recognition and mapping of morphothectonic features and interpretation of its meaning as well as by the compartmentalization of the area according to its morphostructural  and morphothectonic meaning.