Resources for a growing city - sand extraction north of Belo Horizonte (Brazil)

To integrate essential mass, resources for urbanisation into a sustainable land use planning their amount and location and the consequences of their exploitation have to be analysed beforehand. A multi-temporal case study regarding the sand extraction in a small, exemplary area north of Belo Horizonte has been performed which analyses the dynamic of sand extraction during the last decades and its consequences for environment and land use change. Additionally, the sedimentological architecture of the river system has been Studied in an open sand pit to estimate the sand content and the fluvial style of the Quaternary sediments. Based on these case studies. a rough assessment has been made regarding the total sand resources available in this fluvial System. Nevertheless, more detailed studies of the Quaternary sediments are necessary to quantify and locate important sand yielding deposits.