Impact of Drought on Land Productivity and Degradation in the Brazilian Semiarid Region

Franklin Paredes-Trejo (), Humberto Alves Barbosa, Gabriel Antunes Daldegan, Ingrid Teich, César Luis García, T. V. Lakshmi Kumar and Catarina de Oliveira Buriti
Additional contact information
Franklin Paredes-Trejo: Department of Civil Engineering, San Carlos Campus, University of the Western Plains Ezequiel Zamora, Cojedes 2201, Venezuela
Humberto Alves Barbosa: Laboratório de Análise e Processamento de Imagens de Satélites (LAPIS), Institute of Atmospheric Sciences, A. C. Simões Campus, Federal University of Alagoas, Alagoas 57072-900, Brazil
Gabriel Antunes Daldegan: Betty and Gordon Moore Center for Science, Conservation International, 2011 Crystal Drive, Suite 600, Arlington, VA 22202, USA
Ingrid Teich: Centre for Development and Environment (CDE)-WOCAT, University of Bern, 63012 Bern, Switzerland
César Luis García: Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00153 Rome, Italy
T. V. Lakshmi Kumar: Atmospheric Science Research Laboratory, Department of Physics, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai 603203, India
Catarina de Oliveira Buriti: National Semiarid Institute (INSA), Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations (MCTI), Campina Grande 58429-970, Brazil

Land, 2023, vol. 12, issue 5, 1-19

Abstract: The Brazilian semiarid region (BSR) has faced severe drought over the last three decades, which has led to a significant decline in land productivity, posing a considerable threat to food security and the local economy and communities. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has proposed the use of Earth observation-derived vegetation indices for monitoring land degradation across regions. In this study, we aim to evaluate three comprehensive UNCCD-recommended land productivity dynamic (LPD) approaches in the BSR by utilizing the standardized precipitation–evapotranspiration index (SPEI) at 12-month time scales as a benchmark drought index obtained from ground-based measurements. Our findings indicate that the LPD methods utilizing residual trends analysis (RESTREND), Trends.Earth (TE), and the Food and Agricultural Organization’s World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (FAO-WOCAT) are best suited for identifying degraded land areas in the BSR region compared to other approaches. However, it is advisable to use these methods with caution, since they do not fully capture the impact of drought on vegetation and may result in underestimating the extent of degraded areas. The RESTREND-based LPD, TE, and FAO-WOCAT estimate that the BSR region reached 213,248 km 2 , 248,075 km 2 , and 246,783 km 2 of degraded land, respectively, between 2001 and 2015. These findings may be valuable for decision-makers involved in land management and conservation efforts in the Sertão region of Brazil.

Keywords: land degradation; desertification; land use/cover change; remote sensing; NDVI (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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