Although the final decision on the conference was made with some delay and, consequently, the organizers had much less than a year for their work, the information on participation (210 abstracts received from 25 countries of five continents) had the promise of a successful meeting.
Certainly, the venue was a major attraction for participants: the 77-year-old Hotel Gloria of great fame, located close to the centre of a city of splendid natural setting, Rio de Janeiro. The event, as it was revealed in the opening address of Professor Selma Costa, president of the Brazilian Geomorphological Union, was an excellent occasion for the members of our young host organization to present their results and make personal acquaintances with geomorphologists in other parts of the world.
The paper sessions on tropical, fluvial and coastal geomorphology, gully development, soilsยฑ geomorphology interactions, long-term landscape evolution with special regard to the role of tectonic movements were introduced by a series of excellent plenary lectures by Michael Summerfield, Mike Kirkby, Joa รo Jose ร Bigarella (a great figure in Brazilian geology) and Thomas Dunne. In the oral sessions a large number of our Brazilian hosts presented their work in English, while the majority of lectures, held in Portuguese, were translated simultaneously by professionals. Many of them provoked short but vivid discussions immediately after the presentation or during the breaks. The poster sessions, where mostly regional studies in various states of the Brazilian federation were shown, were equally interesting. If I might choose, I found the posters related to the geomorphological manifestations of plate tectonics the most intriguing, but others, on climatic influences or human impacts on the environment, were equally carefully prepared, sometimes using advanced techniques of research and presentation.
The other events associated with the conference were an IGU GERTEC Commission meeting and a GCTE symposium on gully erosion. Several business meetings were held in various circles.
A special benefit for participants were the one-day field trips on 22 July (cost included in the registration fee). The options offered were hillslope erosion and landslides in Petropolis, hydrological processes and mass movements in the Tijuca massif, and coastal and structural geomorphology of Rio.
After a successful conference congratulations are due to the main scientific organizer, Dr Nelson Ferreira Fernandes (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), and his colleagues and to the staff of the company responsible for the technical running of the conference, Gauche Eventos. They were always helpful, no matter with what problems we turned to them.
Out of the four post-conference field trips offered, two attracted participants in sufficient number. The four-day one with Joa รo Jose ร Bigarella and Oscar Fernandes (University of West Parana) led across the state of Parana to the Iguac รu Falls and the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world, the Itaipu Dam.