As part of the celebration of its 80 years, the IBGE is relaunching today, July 26, 2016, the Journal of Brazilian Geography - RBG, an important scientific publication published between 1939 and 2006. Now available in electronic media, the RBG resumes the activities in its 61st volume, bringing articles of a number of distinguished researchers. In addition, a cumulative index of the historical archives of the RBG – 60 volumes and 238 numbers, between 1939 and 2006 – is available as a special edition. The launching ceremony will be held in Rio de Janeiro, at the IBGE Auditorium located at Chile Avenue, 500, 3rd floor at 10am.

After a ten-year gap, the Journal of Brazilian Geography publishes a new edition. The launching ceremony will be attended by professors Jurandyr Ross (USP), Roberto Lobato Correa (UFRJ and UERJ), Cláudio Egler (UFGD) Jan Bitoun (UFPE) and Luiz Felipe Castiglione (UERJ), as well as by the editor-in-chief, Adma Hamam de Figueiredo (IBGE).

The edition released today brings two sections – Research Articles (five articles) and Essays, Remarks and Reviews (two essays) – and also the collaboration of especially-invited guests from the IBGE and other institutions.

The first article is Limites no espaço-tempo: a retomada de um debate (Limits in space-time: the resumption of a discussion), in which Rogerio Haesbaert (UFF) discusses socio-spatial phenomena, like the militarization of the Rio de Janeiro slums, their borders and their power relations.

In the second article, O relevo brasileiro no contexto da América do Sul (The Brazilian relief in the context of South America), Jurandyr Ross (USP) synthetically explains the relief of our territory in light of geomorphological processes, in the scale of the South American continent.

Although a fundamental issue in the capitalist society, a relatively minor subject in the history of geography is discussed by Fabio Contel (USP) in the third article, As finanças e o espaço geográfico: contribuições centrais da geografia francesa e da geografia brasileira (Finances and the geographic space: key contributions of the French and Brazilian geographies).

In his article, Roberto Luz (IBGE) introduces the major concepts of the geodetic systems of vertical reference in his article Cálculo de altitudes científicas e sua aplicação no reajustamento da Rede Altimétrica de Alta Precisão do Sistema Geodésico Brasileiro (Calculation of scientific altitudes and its application in the readjustment of the High Accuracy Altimetric Network of the Brazilian Geodetic System).

The work of Rafael Ferreira (IBGE) and colleagues entitled Avaliação da qualidade posicional de ortoimagens RapidEye (Assessment of the positional quality of RapidEye orthoimages) closes this section. It aims at determining the reliability of the data obtained by the RapidEye system, comprising five multispectral satellites able to capture optical images 77 km wide.

In the first essay of the next section, A Ferro e Fogo, história ambiental e a geografia brasileira: um diálogo por inventar (With Broadax and Firebrand, environmental history and the Brazilian geography: a discussion to be invented), Christian Brannstrom (Texas A&M University) takes the opportunity of the 20-year anniversary of the publication of Warren Dean´s book A Ferro e Fogo: a História e a Devastação da Mata Atlântica Brasileira (With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest) to reflect on the discussions of the Brazilian geographers about this classic book.

Finally, Roberto Lobato Corrêa´s essay (UFRJ and UERJ) entitled Processos, formas e interações espaciais (Spatial interactions, forms and processes) highlights the main subjects of the space cultural, economic and social dynamics and organization, the major objective of human geography.

Call for papers for the second edition of this journal, to be published in 2017, goes from now to October 31, 2016. Visit the web portal of the RBG to access its contents and submit articles.