COMPARTIMENTAÇÃO GEOMORFOLÓGICA DO RIO PARAGUAI NA BORDA NORTE DO PANTANAL MATO-GROSSENSE, REGIÃO DE CÁCERES - MT

Abstract

The Upper Paraguay drainage basin is situated in west-central Brazil, near the Bolivian border. The river flows from north to south and its altitudes ranges from 130m (Cáceres) to 80m (Nabileque). In the Pantanal wetland, the Paraguay is the trunk river of an alluvial depositional tract characterized by complex geomorphologic zonation resulted from an intricate geologic evolution from the Late Pleistocene to the present. This paper focuses the Paraguay River at the northern portion of the Pantanal wetland, in the Caceres Municipality (Mato Grosso State), where four different geomorphologic zones were characterized. Upstream, the Paraguay plain is a meander belt confined in a valley incised on older alluvial deposits. Downstream, the river deflects 90° to east at the entrance to the Pantanal wetland and acquires a distributary pattern. The fluvial discharge diminishes in the Pantanal due to the presence of many points and channel outflow. Many avulsion belts and abandoned channels are visible within the floodplain, some of them still active during flood events.

Keywords

• Paraguay River
• Pantanal wetland
• fluvial geomorphology
• channel pattern.