Preface

The VIII Latin American Congress in Space Geophysics was held in Mérida, Yucatán, México from July 11 to 17, 2008 and was organized by scientists from the Asociación Latino Americana de Ciencias Espaciales (ALAGE). The COLAGE is especially important for the Latin American Scientists as it allows us the possibility of having interesting and useful discussions concerning all areas of space science. The meeting gathered around 120 participants from many countries: Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, France, Germany, Guatemala, Hungary, Japan, México, Perú, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, and USA.

Members of the Instituto de Geofísica, of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Blanca Emma Mendoza Ortega (President), Esteban Hernández Quintero, Héctor Javier Durand Manterola, Juan Américo González Esparza, María Dolores Maravilla Meza, María Guadalupe Cordero Tercero, Sergey Pulinets, Victor Velasco Herrera, and Xóchitl Blanco Cano, served as the Local Organizing Committee. For their work, they received a strong back up from Abraham Chian, Alberto Foppiano (President of ALAGE), Bela Fejer, Héctor Pérez de Tejada, Jorge Chau, Juan Roederer, Marcos Machado, Mario Acuña, Marta Rovira, Rainer Schwenn, and Roberto Bruno, members of the International Organizing Committee.

The purpose of this conference was to bring together scientists and students to discuss the exciting developments in the study of the impact of the solar activity on all parts of the solar terrestrial system, from the interplanetary medium to planetary magnetospheres and deep into the Earth's ionosphere. The scientific program consisted of oral presentations and posters. The key problems addressed at the conference were the processes of generation, transport and interaction of the solar activity energy, which were analyzed through the study of coronal mass ejections, numerical simulations of solar wind plasma and the generation of shock waves, study of planetary magnetospheres, and space weather in general.

This issue presents refereed contributions from some of the participants and it is organized in 5 sections: solar physics (Juan Américo González and Alejandro Lara, Associate editors), cosmic rays (Rogelio Caballero, Associate Editor), interplanetary medium (Sergio Dasso, Associate Editor), planetary magnetospheres and Geomagnetism (Dolores Maravilla, Associate Editor), and Ionosphere/Upper Atmosphere (Alberto Foppiano, Associate Editor). The editors of this issue wish to thank all anonymous reviewers for their collaboration. We fully realized that the solution of the overall problem of solar physics and space weather should consider all of these aspects together. Efforts in achieving this have been made by many participants. We hope that this number will constitute an important contribution to the space geophysics literature.

We gratefully acknowledge the support from the following institutions: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México through the Instituto de Geofísica, Posgrado en Ciencias de la Tierra and Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico (DGAPA), ALAGE (Asociación Latinoamericana de Ciencias Espaciales), Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), Centro Latinoamericano de Física (CLAF), and International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA). In particular, we thank the financial support of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México through the Instituto de Geofísica assuming the cost of the publication of the special issue of Geofísica Internacional

Román Pérez Enríquez
Guest Editor