The Camamu Bay, an important fishing, mining and tourist site, is located at the South Coastal Region of the State of Bahia, Brazil. This large water body is surrounded by extensive mangrove forest and has been the object of many geo-environmental studies. The objective of this work is to present partial results of one of these studies, a mineralogical evaluation in the sediments of the Camamu Bay's mangrove. This semi-quantitative study showed that in the stations next the mining zone the sediment is rich in quartz, barite and clays, with small percentage of pyrite and jarosite. However, for the majority of the stations, the mineralogy is predominantly: quartz and clays, with a variety of percentages of barite, pyrite and crude gypsum in some stations. The results obtained in this work indicated that, for this studied mangrove, the mineralogical composition of the sediments seems to be intimately related to the geologic processes occurring locally. The processes can be: either weathering processes in situ, or man made processes with posterior carriage; or through mineralogical modifications in situ, resulting from the physical-chemical conditions operating at the environment.
Camamu Bay; Mangrove; Mineralogy
