Aziz Nacib Ab'Sáber is an environmentalist and one of Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

´s most respected scientists, honored with the highest awards of Brazilian science in geography

Geography

Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

, geology

Geology

Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...

, ecology

Ecology

Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...

 and archaeology

Archaeology

Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

. Graduated in geography, he is a former president and current honororary president of the SBPC (Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science), Emeritus Professor of the University of São Paulo

University of São Paulo

Universidade de São Paulo is a public university in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. It is the largest Brazilian university and one of the country's most prestigious...

 and member of the highest rank - Order Grão-Cruz in Earth Sciences - of the Academy of Science.

The contributions of Ab`Saber to science range from the first research of oil camps in Brazil's northeast to surveys of Brazil's natural realms and the restoration of the history of forests, camps and primitive humans over geologic time in South America. He made central contributions to biology, South American archaeology, and to Brazilian ecology, geology and geography.

Ab'Sáber was the first person to classify scientifically the Brazilian and South-America territory in morphoclimatic domains. He also contributed to the "Pleistocene

Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....

 refuge hypothesis", an attempt to explain the distribution of Neotropical taxa as a function of their isolation in forest

Forest

A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...

 fragments during glacial periods, which allowed populations to speciate

Speciation

Speciation is the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise. The biologist Orator F. Cook seems to have been the first to coin the term 'speciation' for the splitting of lineages or 'cladogenesis,' as opposed to 'anagenesis' or 'phyletic evolution' occurring within lineages...

.

Selected publications

• Ab'Sáber, A. N. 1982. The paleoclimate and paleoecology of Brazilian Amazonia. In Biological Diversification in the Tropics. New York:Columbia University Press. p. 41-59.
• Ab'Sáber, A. N. 1983. O domínio dos cerrados: introdução ao conhecimento. Revista Servidor Público. vol. 40, p. 41-55.
• Ab'Sáber, A. N. 1986. Geomorfologia da região Corridor Carajás-São Luiz. In Carajás. Desafio Político, Ecologia e Desenvolvimento. São Paulo:CNPq. p. 88-123.
• Ab'Sáber, A. N. 1989. Zoneamento ecológico e econômico da Amazônia: questão de escala e método. Revista Estudos Avançados. vol. 5, p. 4-20.
• Ab'Sáber, A. N. 1990. Um plano differencial para o Brasil, Projeto Floram. Revista Estudos Avançados. vol. 5, p. 19-62.
• Ab'Sáber, A. N. 1990. FLORAM: Nordeste Seco. Revista Estudos Avançados. vol. 4, p. 149-174.
• Ab`Saber, A. N. Ecossistemas do Brasil. Metalivros, 2006.