As part of the celebration of it 72nd anniversary of foundation, IBGE releases, today, volume no. 67 of the Brazilian Statistical Yearbook – 2007 edition and a special edition to celebrate the 70 years of the Brazilian Magazine of Geography.

As part of the celebration of it 72^nd  anniversary of foundation, IBGE releases, today, volume no. 67 of the Brazilian Statistical Yearbook – 2007 edition and a special edition to celebrate the 70 years of the Brazilian Magazine of Geography. The release of the Yearbook marks the 100 years of participation of the division called, at the time, General Directorate of Statistics of Mário Augusto Teixeira de Freitas, responsible for the structuring and systematization of geographic and statistical information in the country. IBGE has chosen 2008 as the Teixeira de Freitas year of Brazilian Statistics, in order to pay homage to this important figure.

With its 540 pages, the Statistical Yearbook is considered a reference work about the Brazilian reality, presenting information generated by surveys, researches and studies conducted by IBGE and other institutions. The data – of statistical (demographic, social and economic), geographic, cartographic, geodetic and environmental nature - make it possible to know the physical, human, social, economic and territorial reality of the country. The publication brings seven thematic sections and also pictures, graphs, tables and glossaries.

Section 1, about the Characterization of the territory brings information about the highest points in Brazil and about its states, frontiers, coastal zones, the production of wood, recycling and so on. Section 2, about the Demographic, social and economic characteristics of the population contains projection for the Brazilian population until 2020, civil register statistics, annual growth rates, data about labor and income, traffic accidents and the sex and age groups of Brazilian voters. Sections 3, 4 and 5 refer, respectively, to aspects of activities of Agriculture and vegetal extraction, Industry and Services. Indexes, prices, cost and salaries form Section 6 and Macroeconomic aggregates, Section 7, bringing information about public finances, federal administration and National Accounts.

Volume no. 60 of the Brazilian Magazine of Geography brings articles written by experts on geography and related sciences, published in the magazine throughout the last seven decades. The first two main articles about the Measurement of Altitude of the Bandeira Peak in the Caparaó Mountains and about the General principles of cartography, by Alírio de Matos, deal with the importance of field work in the elaboration of maps. In the comment Geography and Cartography, Christovam Leite de Castro highlights the different ways these two sciences portray the territory. Atmospheric Circulation in Brazil, by Edmon Nimer, brings contributions to the current discussions about global warming. The advance in the occupation of the Brazilian territory is the topic approached in the articles of Lysia Maria Cavalcanti Bernardes (The problems of pioneer groups in the state of Paraná) and Leo Waibel (Pioneer zones in Brazil) – references for several researches – and, more recently, in the approaches of Bertha Koiffman Becker (Frontier and urbanization revisited) and Orlando Valverde (Destruction of the Amazon forest). The main matters of agrarian geography are treated in the classic study of Nilo Bernardes, General characteristics of Brazilian agriculture in the middle of the 20^th century. A preliminary draft of the division of Brazil in the so-called homogeneous regions is the title to the article by Pedro Geiger. Urban surveys are represented by five articles written by Milton Santos, Roberto Lobato Corrêa, Group of metropolitan areas, Speridião Faisol, and Fany Davidovich and Olga Maria Buarque de Lima.