Soil-geomorphology characterization in urban tropical contexts

The Torres River is one of the most urbanized catchments in Costa Rica, with only 46.67 km2 and approximately 50% of its area is covered by urban land uses, comprising nearly 13% of the national population. The quick rural-urban transition during the last century has had intense environmental impacts along the Greater Metropolitan Area (GAM) of Costa Rica. We performed a geomorphology map of the Torres River catchment using photointerpretation and digitization processes. Moreover, we generated three catenas of the upper, middle, and low sections of the catchment in order to describe and characterize soil profiles, where we also included clay mineralogy analysis using X-ray diffraction techniques. Our results are key to understand the landforms and soils interactions with the surrounding environmental dynamics and anthropic pressures.