The Rio de Janeiro State presents a large set of relief compartments that reflects several types of landscapes and different forms of human intervention. The recognition and mapping of each relief compartment and the analysis of the acting erosion and depositional processes is important to evaluate environmental impacts and to bases purposes of territorial planning and management.

The Rio de Janeiro State could be presented synthetically on two morphostructural domains: the Atlantic Orogenic Belt and the Cenozoic Sedimentary Basins, and several morphosculptural domains, subordinated.

The first one composes metamorphic and igneous rocks of Neoproterozoic age affected by a extensional tectonic between the Jurassic and early Tertiary age, caused by the South Atlantic opening. This tectonic generates a sequence of normal faults that produced the coastal ranges and the high escarpments of the Serra do Mar and Mantiqueira.

The uplift of blocks resulting from this tectonic event sustained residual uplands such as the Bocaina and Varre-Sai Plateaus. Structural valleys were also produced, such as the Middle Paraíba do Sul Valley, that, sometimes, presents aligned ridges produced by lithological and structural controls. Next to the coastal plains occur low hilly terrains that were dissected until the Late Cenozoic in adjustment to the general base level.

The second one composes sedimentary rocks of Early Cenozoic age and sediments of Quaternary age. The sedimentary rocks were stored in continental basins of Eocene-Oligocene age, such as the Resende and Volta Redonda basins or next to the Ocean on the Northern State represented by the "Barreiras Formation". These terrains form a characteristic tablelands morphology. The sediments of the fluvial-marine lowlands and the coastal plains were generated by transgressive-regressive cycles during the Quaternary, that promoted the general drowning of the coastal relief characterized by bays, lagoons, beach ridges and isolated hills that marks the lowlands morphology.