A representative part of the vegetation cover of Gouveia-MG has been deforested over centuries of intensive agricultural activity. The original vegetation was the Cerrado with its variation Cerradão, the Ciliar Forest and the Altitudinal Low Vegetation. The objective of this research is to establish the relation between the physiognomic characteristics of the woody vegetation cover, such as total height, branch height, productivity and structure with the geomorphologic characteristics of the basin. Ten slopes, out of 320, with the occurrence of gullies mapped using aerial-photographs (1:25,000), were selected for sampling on the basis of their occurrence in the basin and of their erosional forms. In each slope, geomorphological sites were identified through the occurrence of break of slope, in the middle of which a soil profile was described and samples collected. The characteristics of the tree strata were also measured using the square method. Through statistic analysis it has been possible to identify high values of the physiognomic characteristics as well as productivity of those trees growing on soils derived from metabasic rocks that occur normally in valleys, amphitheaters and hollows. The minor values correspond to those growing over granite and schist derived soils, occurring preferentially in the upper and middle slopes. Frequency and distribution analysis of the 26 species of trees identified showed that Eugenia dysenteric is the most abundant species and the one with the largest distribution. The data obtained corroborated a strong correlation between underlying rock and the geomorphologic dynamics of the slopes, analyzed on the basis of tree vegetation characteristics.
*This study was financially supported by FAPEMIG.