Serra do Mar: Oitocentos metros entre o porto e o planalto

Cerejo, Lucas Nakamura

doi:10.5281/zenodo.23539548

No. 040 Elevation · relief The relief of São Paulo 2/3

The Serra do Mar

Eight hundred metres between port and plateau

Fig. 040 Santos lowland, Serra do Mar and São Paulo plateau, between Mongaguá, Bertioga and São Paulo (SP) EPSG:4674 Source: Copernicus DEM GLO-90 (ESA, European Union), digital surface model, 90 m pixels, WWF / HydroSHEDS, IBGE

Profile A–B leaves the beach at Santos and runs 15 km across the lowland, between the mangroves and the port; apart from a 109 m hill right at the start, it stays a few metres above sea level. Then the Serra do Mar rises over Cubatão: 769 m of climb in 5 km, and at the top begins the plateau, which rolls on at around 760 m to São Bernardo do Campo and São Paulo. The whole slope, from 20 to 700 m, takes up only 596 km² in the frame’s elevation bands, 14% of the land; 72.5% of the ground lies above 700 m. The Anchieta and Imigrantes motorways and the railway climb this wall, and the Billings reservoir’s water is pumped down it to Cubatão. The highest point in the frame, 1,185 m, is in Mogi das Cruzes. Second 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 10 elevation bands, finer near the sea, with the area of each
perfil line The A–B profile line, 35.7 km
ponto_mais_alto point Highest point in the frame, 1,185 m, in Mogi das Cruzes
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: Santos lowland, Serra do Mar and São Paulo plateau, between Mongaguá, Bertioga and São Paulo (SP)
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 1.8 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.23539548

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How to cite

Cerejo, L. N. (2026). Serra do Mar: oitocentos metros entre o porto e o planalto [The Serra do Mar: Eight hundred metres between port and plateau] (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23539548

@dataset{cerejo2026_serra_do_mar,
  author    = {Cerejo, Lucas Nakamura},
  title     = {Serra do Mar: Oitocentos metros entre o porto e o planalto},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  version   = {1.0.0},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23539548},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23539548},
  language  = {portuguese},
  note      = {English title: The Serra do Mar: Eight hundred metres between port and plateau. Licence CC BY 4.0}
}

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

1 Area: Santos lowland, Serra do Mar and São Paulo plateau, between Mongaguá, Bertioga and São Paulo (SP) 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. 040

The Serra do Mar between Santos and the plateau

Português · English

Plate No. 040, the second of three in the collection The relief of São Paulo: after the Mantiqueira, the state’s other wall, the one that divides the coast from the plateau.

What the files contain

File / layer	Geometry	Contents
`serra_do_mar_relevo.tif`	raster	elevation in whole metres, 90 m pixels (3 arc-seconds), clipped to the frame; the sea is 0
`faixas_altitude`	polygon	10 bands, with limits at 20, 100, 200, 400, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1,000 and 1,200 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 80 km tall, centred on 46.35° W and 23.85° S, in a Transverse Mercator projection.
Hillshade: light from the north-west, with relief exaggerated 1.8 times, blended with the hypsometric tints of the panel’s scale. The bands are finer at the bottom, so that the lowland is not all one colour.
Profile A–B: 600 points interpolated between A (46.33° W, 23.985° S), on the beach at Santos, and B (46.53° W, 23.72° S), on the plateau, 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 the limits in the table and turned into simplified polygons; the sea is left out. The share above 700 m given in the text is counted pixel by pixel, on the frame’s land.
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 Atlantic Forest on the slope and among the buildings of Santos, elevation may sit a few metres above the terrain.
The 90 m pixel smooths the scarp: the steepest slopes look less abrupt than they are, and the real climb in 5 km may be greater.
Reservoirs such as the Billings show the elevation of the water surface, not the bottom.
The vertical exaggeration of the hillshade is a design choice: it helps read the shapes, but makes the relief look rougher than it is.

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