The contaminants produced by human activities released in the environment may move from one environmental compartment to another and reach the water bodies, where they rapidly associate to particulate matter and are incorporated to the sediments. Thus, the relationship between water and sediment makes this compartment on of the main targets for concern and analysis, given its importance in cycling matter and in bioavailability of various chemical compounds to the water environment. The objective of this work was to study the geochemical behaviour of the elements Al, Fe, Cr, Cu, Zn, Mn and P in the surface sediments of the Guarapiranga reservoir (23°47'S and 46°32"W) by means of the sequential extraction technic consisting of four stages, followed by the detection in inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES). Samples were collected from the superficial sediment in 14 (fourteen) stations strategically chosen, this way being able to know the heterogeneity of the system and to determinate the mobility of persistent trace elements and their spatial distribution in the sedimentary compartment of the reservoir. The samples were subjected to a drying process and then separating the silt fraction. The sequential extraction was made in four steps, fraction 1 acid soluble linked to carbonates, fraction 2 reducible to iron and manganese oxides, fraction 3 oxidable linked to organic matter and fraction 4 residual. All the process was done in triplicate and the concentration of the elements was determined by ICP-OES. Based on the results obtained by the sequential extraction, it was possible to evaluate the distribution of the elements in the four distinct geochemical fractions, as well as the individual mobility factor of those elements in the reservoir. The sum of the first three fractions composes the fraction considered bioavailable, while the difference from the total extracted represented the residual fraction. Parting from the results obtained it is inferred that the Guarapiranga reservoir has two distinct compartments, one more degraded that goes from point GU-05 to GU-14 that suffers from the impacts of the occupations in the surroundings and one more preserved that goes from point GU-01 to GU-04, with little influence from urban occupation in the surroundings. The degree of global mobility follows the tendency of up and down stream in the reservoir, next to the barrage.