DRAINAGE NETWORK AND ENERGY RELIEF OF MADEIRA ISLAND (PORTUGAL): PRELIMINARY NOTES

Abstract

A geomorphological study, integrated with satellite imagery analysis, has been carried out in the Madeira Island to identify the influence of neotectonics on the landscape. Drainage network and energy relief are the main geomorphological indexes used to identify recent uplift. The drainage anomalies and areas of high relief energy, often coincident, are not explainable by means of the local meteoclimatic conditions. Some peculiar anomalies, such as hook-like shapes and torsions of the network, distributed on lineaments that coincides with those detectable from satellite images, indicate a differential direction of central block, symptom of a prevailing tectonics of uplift with a probable horizontal component.