MINING AND ANTHROPOGENIC RELIEF, THE EXAMPLE OF STEATITE EXTRACTION IN SANTA RITA, OURO PRETO, MINAS GERAIS

Abstract

The landforms are shaped by several environmental factors, the human agent being an important element that also shapes and changes the landscape. Mining is one of the main human activities responsible for affecting the physiology of the relief and its shapes. This work aimed to investigate the human influences in the genesis of relief features from the activity of a steatite extraction pit located in the district of Santa Rita, belonging to the municipality of Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais. For this, an aerophotogrammetric survey was carried out using vant, generating altimetry bases, 1m equidistant contour lines, orthophotomosaic and calculation of material volume. As a result, it was possible to identify landforms strongly related to anthropic activities, capable of altering the regime of sedimentary and hydrological flows, as well as the altimetric amplitude of the area. The work showed how the human agent is an important factor to be considered, above all, in the physiology of the landscape in increasingly localized scales, which together can reverberate regionally. For this, the use of bases on an adequate scale is one of the main tools for advances in discussions about anthropogenic reliefs, since their scale demands the perception of processes that operate.