Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: ALBERT SMITH FEITOSA SUASSUNA MARTINS

ANALYSIS OF THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN CLIMATE EXTREME INDICES AND VEGETATION BY NORMALIZED DIFFERENCE AND CLIMATE EXTREME INDICES IN THE SEMI-ARID COUNTRYSIDE OF BRAZIL

NDVI; MODIS; Climdex

Climate change affects the population of planet Earth in countless ways, with extreme weather events being one of the ways that, according to the most recent IPCC report (2021), occur with greater frequency and magnitude. Society can face situations of extreme events that, for example, can have impacts on human health, on vegetation growth, among other aspects. The present study aims to analyze the association between the indexes of climatic extremes and the vegetation index by normalized difference (NDVI) in the semiarid region of Brazil (SAB). The climatic data used were provided by Xavier et al. (2022) and the variables used in the present study are precipitation, maximum and minimum temperature. NDVI data were collected by the MODIS sensor aboard NASA's TERRA/AQUA satellites. The analysis will be carried out primarily by characterizing the dry and rainy periods. Once these periods are determined, an analysis of the trends of the indexes of climatic extremes will be carried out, in order to estimate the cross-correlation between the indexes in the places where there are trends. Later, once the cross-correlation is estimated, the feedback process between the indices will be analyzed, with the objective of verifying the association between the indexes of climatic extremes and the NDVI. The aim is to understand how these factors interact and influence each other. In this way, the study seeks to contribute to the understanding of the impacts of climate change in the semiarid region of Brazil and how this affects vegetation and other environmental aspects, because by better understanding this relationship, it will be possible to understand how ecosystems respond to climate change and, thus, take more informed measures to mitigate its impacts.