Cuestas paulistas: O degrau do basalto

Cerejo, Lucas Nakamura

doi:10.5281/zenodo.23539565

No. 041 Elevation · relief The relief of São Paulo 3/3

The cuestas of São Paulo

The basalt step

Fig. 041 Central São Paulo state, between Jaú, São Carlos, Piracicaba and Botucatu (SP) EPSG:4674 Source: Copernicus DEM GLO-90 (ESA, European Union), digital surface model, 90 m pixels, WWF / HydroSHEDS, IBGE

In the middle of the state, the western São Paulo plateau ends in a step: the cuestas, scarps where the layers of basalt and sandstone break off all at once, facing the Peripheral Depression. Profile A–B leaves the depression near São Pedro, at 500 m, rises to a first plateau at 956 m, dips into a valley at 537 m and climbs the Itirapina cuesta: 543 m of climb in 5 km, up to 1,081 m. On the far side, the ground falls to the Corumbataí valley, at around 640 m. The highest point in the frame, 1,084 m, is right there, in Itirapina; between it and the lowest point lie 671 m. In the south-west, the Botucatu cuesta draws the same step. In the 15,399 km² frame, only 12.3% of the ground lies above 800 m. Third 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 7 elevation bands, every 100 m, with the area of each
perfil line The A–B profile line, 57.2 km
ponto_mais_alto point Highest point in the frame, 1,084 m, in Itirapina
municipios polygon The 58 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: Central São Paulo state, between Jaú, São Carlos, Piracicaba and Botucatu (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 4 times and coloured by elevation band; profile A–B sampled at 600 points, drawn through the frame’s steepest local relief.
Version: v1.0.0
Licence: CC BY 4.0
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23539565

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The map without a frame, with legend, scale, reference system and credit written on it: ready for papers, lectures and slides. In two versions: with the basemap (neighbours and sea) or only the mapped area, on white.

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How to cite

Cerejo, L. N. (2026). Cuestas paulistas: o degrau do basalto [The cuestas of São Paulo: The basalt step] (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23539565

@dataset{cerejo2026_cuestas_paulistas,
  author    = {Cerejo, Lucas Nakamura},
  title     = {Cuestas paulistas: O degrau do basalto},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  version   = {1.0.0},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23539565},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23539565},
  language  = {portuguese},
  note      = {English title: The cuestas of São Paulo: The basalt step. Licence CC BY 4.0}
}

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

1 Area: Central São Paulo state, between Jaú, São Carlos, Piracicaba and Botucatu (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. 041

The cuestas of central São Paulo

Português · English

Plate No. 041, the last of three in the collection The relief of São Paulo: after the two eastern ranges, the quieter step of the interior, where the western plateau meets the Peripheral Depression.

What the files contain

File / layer	Geometry	Contents
`cuestas_relevo.tif`	raster	elevation in whole metres, 90 m pixels (3 arc-seconds), clipped to the frame
`faixas_altitude`	polygon	7 bands every 100 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	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.
The frame is 125 km tall, centred on 48.15° W and 22.62° S, in a Transverse Mercator projection.
Hillshade: light from the north-west, with relief exaggerated 4 times, more than on the collection’s other plates, because the differences in height here are smaller; the hypsometric tints use the same scale on all three plates.
Profile A–B: the line passes through the frame’s steepest local relief, searched in a 3 km window over the whole grid, with the direction chosen among several to cross the scarp. It has 600 points interpolated between A (48.08° W, 22.596° S) and B (47.62° W, 22.306° 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 every 100 m 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, the eucalyptus stands and the buildings, not the ground. Over plantations, elevation may sit more than ten metres above the terrain.
The 90 m pixel smooths the scarp edges, which are narrow: the real climb in 5 km may be greater.
The fourfold exaggeration makes the cuestas look higher than they are; compare the three plates by the colour scale and the profiles, not by the shadows.
The frame’s lowest point falls on the rivers and reservoirs, where the model measures the water surface.

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