Brazilian cartography
522 years of mapping
Ítalo Sousa de Sena
Postdoctoral researcher
Virtual Geographic Environments
03.11.2022
This work was supported from Operational Programme Research, Development and
Education - Project „Postdoc2MUNI“ (No. CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/18_053/0016952).
Summary ● Colony and Empire
○ First maps
■ Exploring the coast
■ Exploring the continental lands
○ Institutionalization of mapping efforts
● Republic
○ First Republic
○ New State
○ Military governments
○ 1988 constitution
● Brazilian Space Program
○ Brazilian satellites
○ Monitoring system
Can you guess the
distances?
Brazil’s extremes
From north to south:
From west to east:
Coastline perimeter:
Ponta dos
Seixas
Ailã river spring
Arroio Chuí
Moa river
spring
Brazil’s extremes
From north to south:
4.365 km
From west to east:
4.319 km
Coastline perimeter:
7.357 km
Can you guess the
distances?
Ailã river spring
Arroio Chuí
Moa river
spring
Ponta dos
Seixas
Brazil
??? km²
Population: ??? million inhabitants
Czech Republic
78,864 km²
Population: 10,7 million inhabitants
thetruesize.com
In comparison to the
Czech Republic
Brazil
8.516.000 km²
Population: 212,6 million inhabitants
Czech Republic
78,864 km²
Population: 10,7 million inhabitants
thetruesize.com
In comparison to the
Czech Republic
Why this comparison?
Why this comparison?
● 522 years of mapping history
● Large areas to be mapped
● Lack of road infrastructure
● Elevated costs to perform mapping
● Wild lands and “empty spaces”
● State institutions concentrated in
urban centers
Population
Roads
Brief Brazilian History Timeline
Events that changed the power, reflecting on changes in territories and borders.
Maps register those changes, keeping track of former power relations in the geographical space.
●
1500-CabralarrivesinBahia
●
2021-Nowadays
●
1818-Brazilelevatedtoakingdom
within
Portugal
●
1534-Colonizationeffectivelystarts
●
1494-TordesilhasTreaty
●
1988-DemocraticConstitution
●
1964-MilitaryCoup-Dictatorship
●
1889-RepublicProclamation
●
1822-Brazil’sIndependencefrom
Portugal
●
1864-1870-ParaguayWar
●
1700-Sugarcaneplantations
●
1750-1780-Goldcycleapogee
●
1808-Portugueseroyalfamilymoveto
theColonyavoidingtheNapoleonicwars
●
1600-1700-Establishmentofcoastal
citiesandexplorationoftheinterior
(Bandeiras)
●
1945-1950-PostWWIIchanges
Colony and Empire
1500
Juan de la Cosa
Planisphere
Does anyone know
the origin of the
country’s name?
Paubrasilia echinata
Ember/Ash (English)
Brasa (Portuguese)
žhavé uhlíky
1519
Terra Brasilis
Lopo Homem
Brasil tree (pau-brasil)
exploration for red ink
production
Many changes over
the centuries
Despite its brief history in comparison
to Czech Republic and Europe, in
general, Brazil’s borders changed a lot
over time.
The dynamic was quite different tough.
The country’s borders changed due
the discovery of lands and also by
territorial disputes among Spain and
Portuguese crowns.
War is something uncommon in the
Brazilian territory, but many local and
regional conflicts and
insurrections/revolutions happened
within the country’s territory.
Remarkable historical maps of Brazil
Cantino Planisphere (1502)
Brazil represented with its still undiscovered territory
Cantino Planisphere (1502)
Brazil represented with its still undiscovered territory
Luís Teixeira (1574)
Maps of the hereditary captaincies of the Portuguese colony
Divides the colony in ‘equal’ parts starting from the coast
reaching the Tordesilhas Treaty line
1630
Olinda and Recife, Pernambuco
Dutch Portuguese War
(1602-1663)
Hendrick Corneliszoon Lonck
(1568-10 October 1634), with a
fleet of 52 ships of the Dutch
West India Company, captured
the Portuguese port of Olinda on
the coast of Brazil on 14 February
1630.
This action, which was followed
by the capture of the state of
Pernambuco, was a part of the
Dutch-Portuguese War called the
Sugar War whereby the Dutch
acquired the sugar trade from the
Portuguese in this region. The
Dutch-Portuguese war was itself
an extension of the Eighty Years
War (1568-1648) since the
Portuguese were joined to Spain
in a dynastic union between 1580
and 1640.
João Teixeira Albernaz II (1666)
Maps of the Portuguese Kingdom
Rich in toponyms and topographic details referring to the
Brazilian coastline
The great river Maranon or of the Amazon.
Based on map produced by father Samuel Fritz in 1690.
One of the first representations of the Amazon river as a whole.
1722
L'Amerique meridionale
Guillaume de Delisle
What can you spot in this
representation of Brazil that
remains almost the same
nowadays?
Recens elaborata mappa geographica
regni Brasiliae in America Meridionali
(1728)
Matthaeus Seutter (1678-1756)
Redesigned borders of hereditary
captaincies of the Portuguese colony.
Continental lands exploration and mapping
L'Amerique meridionale
Daniel de La Feuille (1708)
Shoreline and continental lands mapping
● Bandeirantes - Mercenaries
● Native people hunting
● Brazilian gold rush (1st cycle)
○ First urban network
● Trespassing Tordesilhas Treaty
Brazilian gold cycle (XVIII and XIX
centuries)
Two main waves of explorers going towards
the continental lands
Gold was first found in the last decade of
the XVII century.
Importance of mapping the mines in order
to collect taxes (⅕ of all explored gold must
be paid to the Portuguese crown)
Establishing a network of villages
connected by trails, rivers and mountain
ridges as landmarks for orienteering.
Portuguese crown
move to Brazil (1808)
Plan of St. Sebastian of Rio de Janeiro
city. This map was produced to
celebrate the year when the
Portuguese royal family moved to the
colony. It was printed on 1812.
N
Republic Proclamation
Institutionalization of mapping activities
by the Military
1810 - First school for Military Geographers Engineers in
the Royal Military Academy
In 1875, the general map of the empire was presented
in the international exposition in Philadelphia, U.S., in
order to show how the Brazilian Empire was arranged
in that time, as well as to show how established was
the mapping efforts by the national military.
1882 - opening of the official litographic workshop,
giving autonomy for the country to publish its own
maps.
Militar systematic mapping project (1901)
1900-1945
Alfredo Vidal, founder of the Military Geographic
Service
1914 - 1st stereophotogrammetric survey in Brazil
After WWI - Austriac Cartographic Mission
- Map of Brazil 1:1 000 000
1922 - 100 years of independence celebration
- Carta Geographica do Brasil
1928 - Creation of the Border Mapping
Commission
Vargas Era (1930-1945) and
post WWII
1932 - Army Geographic Service
1938 - Establishment of the Brazilian Institute of Geography
and Statistics (IBGE)
1942 - First aerophotogrametry survey by the USAF (United
States Air Force)
1954 - 1st Brazilian Geographers Congress
1956 - Army Geographic Service starts using UTM system
1957 - Foundation of the Brazilian Cartographic Society
Brazilian Space Program
Brazilian Space Agency
Alcântara Launching Centre (CLA) - Maranhão
Barreira do Inferno Launching Centre - Rio Grande do Norte
INPE (National Institute of Space Research)
- Responsible for:
- meteorological monitoring and reports
- satellite technology development
- land use assessment and monitoring
- satellite imagery processing and
publishing
Brazilian Air Force
- ITA (Aeronautics Technological Institute)
- IAE (Aeronautics and Space Institute)
Brazilian satellites - CBERS (China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite)
Partnership with China Academy Space Technology (CAST)
14/10/1999
disabled
21/10/2003
disabled
19/09/2007
disabled
09/12/2013
problems to
reach
operational orbit
07/12/2014
operating
20/12/2019
operating
Imagem WFI – composição
em cores reais, 55 m de
resolução espacial, recorte de
330 km por 200 km (Cuiabá,
MT, abaixo à esquerda;
Reservatório do Manso acima
no centro).
Imagem MUX –
composição em cores
reais, 16 m de resolução
espacial, recorte de 30
km por 20 km (cidades
de Jardim e Guia Lopes
da Laguna, MS).
Imagem WPM – banda pancromática, 2
m de resolução espacial, recorte de 5
km por 3 km (cidade de Primavera do
Leste, MT).
Brazilian satellites - AMAZÔNIA 1
● Launched on 28.02.2021
● Partnership with India Space
Agency
● Illegal deforestation
● Shoreline monitoring
● Operates along with CBERS-4 and
CBERS-4A satellites (constellation)
Legal Amazon region Deforestation Satellite Monitoring Project
PRODES (TerraBrasilis)
http://terrabrasilis.dpi.inpe.br/app/map/deforestation?hl=pt-br
Deforestation Detection Alert System
http://terrabrasilis.dpi.inpe.br/app/map/alerts?hl=pt-br
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnum
ber=7128317
General Coordination of Earth Observation
Amazon Region Centre
Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications
https://visualizador.inde.gov.br/
MapBiomas is a collaborative network formed by NGOs, universities, and
technology startups, which reveals the transformations in the Brazilian territory
through science, making knowledge about land use accessible to seek
conservation and combat changes in climate.
It has produced annual land cover and land use mapping and monitors surface
water and fire scars monthly with data from 1985. The project also validates
and produces reports for each deforestation event detected in Brazil since January
2019 with the product MapBiomas Alerta.
https://plataforma.brasil.mapbiomas.org/
Questions?
Comments?
This work was supported from Operational Programme Research, Development and
Education - Project „Postdoc2MUNI“ (No. CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/18_053/0016952).
italosena@gmail.com