The present efforts to plan and develop the geographic area known as the Sepetiba Port Hinterland ("Retroporto de Sepetiba), which comprises a great part of the Sepetiba Bay Coastal Plain, in the western part of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, bring into light the basic role played by Geomorphology upon the modern human occupation of a geographic area. This fact has been recognized by geographers since long ago, but the recent development of the technologies and methodologies of geoprocessing, remote sensing, together with investigations about landscape fragmentation and biodiversity, promoted a renewed and specific interest on geomorphologic classifications and related issues. It is possible to identify areas where dominant geomorphologic processes do act, and this identification may be translated into digital mapping. This procedure allows exhaustive investigation, and eventually the unexpected revealing, of topological relations occurring among the existing environmental (physical, biotic and socio-economic) conditions prevailing on a geographic area.

For the area of the Sepetiba Bay Coastal Plain, digital maps showing the territorial distribution of prevailing geomorphologic processes were successfully used as a basic support for environmental impact evaluation studies carried at the Laboratório de Geoprocessamento Aplicado of the Departamento de Geociencias of the Instituto de Agronomia of the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro.

Although requiring intensive attention to the relation processes x landforms, the identification of the territorial distribution of geomorphologic processes allows, through geoprocessing, the pointing out of simultaneous occurrences with other features. This may indicate causal relationships between the processes themselves and other relevant environmental characteristics. This direct indication of relationships is of special interest to decision support problems involving multidisciplinary research teams and financial resources administrators, particularly when concerning potential land uses and biodiversity investigations.