• Highlights

• The IBGE released today (29) an unprecedented publication with the travel plan and discussions related to a technical expedition organized by the IBGE and held in November last year, called “Through the mountains of Rio de Janeiro.”
• The publication brings the unprecedented report about the expedition carried out through the mountains of Rio de Janeiro. The event gathered teachers, researchers and students. Altogether, they were 33 participants from different regions of Brazil.
• The expedition was arranged by the National Executive Committee (CEN) of the Brazilian System of Relief Classification (SBCR), the result of a partnership between the IBGE, the Brazilian Geological Service (SGB) and the Brazilian Geomorphology Union (UGB), aims at creating a taxonomy for the Brazilian relief.
• The expedition through the mountains of Rio de Janeiro was the first one to gather experts aiming at discussing the taxonomy of the relief.
• The second technical expedition arranged by the group took place last Saturday (26) in the Pantanal.

The IBGE released today (29) an unprecedented publication with the travel plan and discussions related to a technical expedition organized by the IBGE and held in November last year. Called “Through the mountains of Rio de Janeiro”, the expedition was part of the XIX Brazilian Symposium on Applied Physical Geography, held from November 7 to 13 last year, at the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). It was the first of a series of expeditions scheduled in the entire country.

The expedition was the result of the creation of the Brazilian System of Relief Classification (SBCR), a joint effort of the IBGE, the Brazilian Geological Service (SGB/CPRM), the Brazilian Geomorphology Union (UGB) and researchers from different education institutions in Brazil to produce a single classification of the relief in the national territory, with a common and standardized language.

“The idea was conceived in this same event [Brazilian Symposium on Applied Physical Geography], which held the first Geomorphological Cartography Workshop, in Fortaleza, in 2019. In this area of knowledge, each mapper creates their own caption and they don´t speak with each other, they don´t link with each other, since researchers may call same things with different names and different things with the same name.  So, it is required to establish a single scientific language in order to create a relief database,” explains geographer Rosangela Botelho, head of the sector of Physical Media of the IBGE´s Directorate of Geosciences (DGC).

The SBCR also arranges the workshops of Geomorphological Cartography, in which the advances of the system are presented to the scientific community, which can participate in the discussions. The expedition through the mountains of Rio de Janeiro occurred in this context and it was the first one to gather experts in the area aiming at disseminating and discussing the taxonomy of the relief. Important issues for the system were discussed along the way and in the breakpoints.

Botelho highlights that one of the advances of the SBCR was to confirm the existence of mountains in Brazil to the scientific community. “Over the years, it was said that Brazil had plateaus, plains and depressions, but it had no mountain at all. I lived that in school as well. Examples of Brazilian mountains are the Sea Mountain and the Mantiqueira Mountain. They can be not so high as the Himalayas or Andes because they are quite older and suffered abrasion over time, yet their formation processes are the same as other mountains in the world,” points her, also highlighting that 33% of the area of Rio de Janeiro comprises mountain reliefs, the largest extension among the Brazilian states.

The first technical expedition through the Brazilian mountains took place during the third edition of the workshop, in Rio de Janeiro. On November 12 last year, 33 participants of the expedition left the UERJ´s Maracanã campus to the first breakpoint, the Christ Overlook, in Petrópolis. That place highlights steep hillsides and the vision of the Guanabara Bay from 740 meters of altitude. The researchers left the overlook to the second breakpoint, located in the border between Petrópolis and Teresópolis. It was the highest point of the expedition: nearly 1,270 meters of altitude.

“It is an area that stuns by its greatness. We discussed the fragility of mountain environments in terms of land use and occupation, especially in that humid region of the Southeast. Rio de Janeiro, which usually has heavy rains in the summer, faces several disasters and landslides, like the one occurred in that region in 2011 and last year,” reports the researcher.

After that, the researchers proceeded to the third breakpoint, the Soberbo Overlook, in Guapimirim, in the border of Teresópolis. The publication emphasizes the panoramic view of the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, highlighted by the Baixada Fluminense, the Guanabara Bay and the Coastal Massifs, as well as the emblematic view of the rock formation of the God´s Finger. The fourth breakpoint of the expedition would be Saint Aleixo, in Magé, but it was not covered due to the bad weather by the end of the afternoon that day.

Among the participants of the expedition were two teachers of the University of Chile, Hugo Romero and Maria Victoria Soto, who used their experiences with the Andes to consider the Sea Mountain, in the visited area, as a relief of mountains. “They were amazed and happy because they didn´t know that there were so much beautiful mountains here. Internationally speaking, Brazil is not said to be a country of mountains. Therefore, we expect that the expeditions help to understand this. I believe it will be a facilitator,” says Botelho, who also talks about adopting the term “mountain”, a term internationally recognized, instead of “sierra”, whose use is more restricted around the world.

Last Saturday (26), the second technical expedition arranged by the SBCR took place. Called “Entering the Pantanal plains”, it started in Campo Grande, capital of Mato Grosso do Sul, and had the Urucum Mountains and Hills as the last breakpoint, in Corumbá, also in that state. The expedition, which counted with the presence of 44 participants, is part of the 14th National Symposium on Geomorphology (SINAGEO), taking place in that municipality. The next expedition is scheduled to occur next year in Paraíba.