Serra da Mantiqueira: A muralha sobre o vale do Paraíba

Cerejo, Lucas Nakamura

doi:10.5281/zenodo.23539387

No. 039 Elevation · relief The relief of São Paulo 1/3

The Mantiqueira range

The wall above the Paraíba valley

Fig. 039 Paraíba valley and Mantiqueira range, between Taubaté and Queluz (SP), with parts of Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro EPSG:4674 Source: Copernicus DEM GLO-90 (ESA, European Union), digital surface model, 90 m pixels, WWF / HydroSHEDS, IBGE

Profile A–B runs 61 km from the south side of the Paraíba valley to the crest of the Mantiqueira. For almost 40 km the ground barely changes, and the Paraíba do Sul river passes at the lowest point, 501 m. Then the range rises all at once: on the steepest stretch the ground climbs 1,332 m in 5 km, up to 2,581 m on the crest. At the top stands Pedra da Mina, in Queluz, on the Minas Gerais border, the highest point in São Paulo: 2,785 m in the 90 m model. Across the valley, the Serra do Mar closes the corridor through which the river, the Via Dutra motorway and the towns run. In the 10,866 km² frame, mean elevation is 1,007 m and 12.9% of the ground lies above 1,500 m. First plate of the collection “The relief of São Paulo”.

Technical record · downloads · citation

At a glance

Layers

relevo raster GeoTIFF of elevation in metres (90 m pixels) clipped to the frame, with the plate’s hypsometric ramp in a .qml style
faixas_altitude polygon 13 elevation bands, every 200 m, with the area of each
perfil line The A–B profile line, 61.0 km
ponto_mais_alto point Pedra da Mina, 2,785 m in the model
municipios polygon The 25 São Paulo municipalities in the frame

Metadata

Sources: Copernicus DEM GLO-90 (ESA, European Union), digital surface model, 90 m pixels
WWF / HydroSHEDS — HydroRIVERS v1.0, South America (Lehner and Grill, 2013)
IBGE — Municipal Mesh 2025 (2025)
Extent: Paraíba valley and Mantiqueira range, between Taubaté and Queluz (SP), with parts of Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro
CRS / Projection: SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674)
EPSG:4674
Software: Python · rasterio · GeoPandas · SciPy · GDAL · QGIS · Node.js · d3-geo
Method: Copernicus DEM GLO-90 tiles mosaicked, lit from the north-west with relief exaggerated 1.6 times and coloured by elevation band; profile A–B sampled at 600 points.
Version: v1.0.0
Licence: CC BY 4.0
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23539387

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How to cite

Cerejo, L. N. (2026). Serra da Mantiqueira: a muralha sobre o vale do Paraíba [The Mantiqueira range: The wall above the Paraíba valley] (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23539387

@dataset{cerejo2026_serra_da_mantiqueira,
  author    = {Cerejo, Lucas Nakamura},
  title     = {Serra da Mantiqueira: A muralha sobre o vale do Paraíba},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  version   = {1.0.0},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23539387},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23539387},
  language  = {portuguese},
  note      = {English title: The Mantiqueira range: The wall above the Paraíba valley. Licence CC BY 4.0}
}

How to read this plate area, projection, scale, legend and source · 1 terms

1 Area: Paraíba valley and Mantiqueira range, between Taubaté and Queluz (SP), with parts of Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro The area the plate covers. Outside it, neighbours and sea are drawn in grey, just for orientation.
2 Coordinates and projection: SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674) The layers are in SIRGAS 2000; the drawing’s projection is written in the colophon at the foot of the panel.
3 Scale: Graphic scale bar in the panel The scale bar is true on the central meridian; away from it, measured distances vary a little.
4 Legend and layers: 5 layers in the GeoPackage · raster, polygon, line, point Read the legend before the map: it tells you whether a colour is a rate or a class, and whether a circle is a total.
5 Sources: Copernicus DEM GLO-90 (ESA, European Union), digital surface model, 90 m pixels; WWF / HydroSHEDS; IBGE (2025) Every figure comes from a public source, with its year. The data sheet gives each one’s address.

Terms on this plate

Hypsometric tints and hillshade: Colours by altitude band, from lowlands to ranges, with a simulated low-angle light that gives the relief its volume.

Anatomy of a plate Full glossary

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Layers, table and figures, under CC BY 4.0. Cite with the DOI.

Full record and citation

Method notes · No. 039

The Mantiqueira range above the Paraíba valley

Português · English

Plate No. 039, the first of three in the collection The relief of São Paulo: three of the state’s landscapes read through elevation, each with a profile across its main step.

What the files contain

File / layer	Geometry	Contents
`mantiqueira_relevo.tif`	raster	elevation in whole metres, 90 m pixels (3 arc-seconds), clipped to the frame
`faixas_altitude`	polygon	13 bands every 200 m: `classe`, `min_m`, `max_m`, `rotulo`, `area_km2`
`perfil`	line	the A–B line: `de`, `para`, `comp_km`
`ponto_mais_alto`	point	`altitude_m`, `nome`
`municipios`	polygon	São Paulo municipalities clipped to the frame: `CD_MUN`, `NM_MUN`

The GPKG and the GeoTIFF are zipped and attached to the relevo-2026 release. The GPKG carries the plate’s QGIS styles; the GeoTIFF comes with a .qml of the same name, which QGIS applies on its own when the file is opened. The profile CSV sits in this folder, in UTF-8, with km, lon, lat and altitude_m.

Method

1° × 1° tiles of the Copernicus DEM GLO-90 mosaicked over the frame’s window. Negative elevations and the sea (zero in the model) are set to 0.
The frame is 105 km tall, centred on 45.2° W and 22.68° S, in a Transverse Mercator projection.
Hillshade: light from the north-west, with relief exaggerated 1.6 times, blended with the hypsometric tints of the panel’s scale.
Profile A–B: 600 points interpolated between A (45.10° W, 22.83° S) and B (44.79° W, 22.36° S), with distance measured on the ellipsoid. The climb in 5 km is the largest difference between the highest and lowest points in a 5 km window sliding along the profile.
Elevation bands: the grid reduced to 180 m (mean of 2 × 2 pixels), split at 200 m intervals and turned into simplified polygons.
HydroRIVERS rivers, only those with a mean discharge of 3 m³/s or more, for reference.

Limitations

GLO-90 is a surface model: it measures the top of the forest and the buildings, not the ground. In the forested parts of the range, elevation may sit a few metres above the terrain.
The 90 m pixel smooths narrow peaks and valleys. Pedra da Mina shows as 2,785 m, below the 2,798 m surveyed in the field; the same applies to the profile’s climb.
The vertical exaggeration of the hillshade is a design choice: it helps read the shapes, but makes the relief look rougher than it is.
The colour scale is the same on all three plates of the collection, so that elevations can be compared between them.

Data licence

Copernicus DEM: © DLR e.V. 2010–2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014–2018, provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA. The plate and the derived layers follow the atlas’s CC BY 4.0 licence, with this attribution.

View this map’s folder on GitHub