Characterizing spatio-temporal patterns of social vulnerability to droughts, degradation and desertification in the Brazilian northeast Rita Marcia da Silva Pinto Vieira a, * , Marcelo Francisco Sestini a , Javier Tomasella b , Victor Marchezini b , Guilherme Reis Pereira a , Alexandre Augusto Barbosa a , Fabrícia Cristina Santos a , Daniel Andres Rodriguez e , Flavio Rodrigues do Nascimento c , Marcos Oliveira Santana d , Francisco Carneiro Barreto Campello d , Jean Pierre Henry Balbaud Ometto a a Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, INPE, Caixa Postal 515, 12245-970, S~ ao Jose dos Campos, SP, Brazil b Centro Nacional de Monitoramento de Desastres Naturais, CEMADEN, Estrada Doutor Altino Bondensan, 500, S~ ao Jose dos Campos, 12247-016, Brazil c Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rua Miguel de Frias, 9 - Icaraí, Niteroi, RJ, 24220-900, Brazil d Ministerio do Meio Ambiente, Secretaria de Extrativismo e Desenvolvimento Rural Sustentavel, SEDR, Departamento de Combate a Desertificaç~ ao – DCD, Esplanada dos Ministerios, Bloco B, Sala 737, Brasília, DF, CEP: 70.068-900, Brazil e Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, COPPE, Caixa Postal 68506, 21941-909, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Desertification Environmental susceptibility Social vulnerability Brazilian semi-arid Public policies ABSTRACT Examples of how environmental susceptibility has a direct impact on the social vulnerability of a population, by affecting both the social and cultural life quality are discussed for the Northeast of Brazil, which is considered to be the poorest region of the country. Several direct and indirect mechanisms associated to soil degradation/ desertification are addressed, mainly in relation to the impact they cause to the livelihood such as income, immigration/emigration rate, and mortality. Our purpose is to provide, based on a social vulnerability index, a spatial-temporal analysis of the population dynamics in response to the effects of degradation/desertification and extended periods of drought. The results of this study demonstrated that social vulnerability is mostly dictated by social factors but marginally by environmental factors. This conclusion has an impact on federal public policies designed to reduce social inequality in the region. 1. Introduction According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertifica- tion (The United Nations, 2017), at least 12 million hectares of land are lost every year to desertification and drought alone. In this context, the UNCDD recommends the “strengthening of scientific and technical cooperation networks, of monitoring indicators and of information sys- tems at all levels, as well as their integration, as appropriate, in world- wide systems of information” (ecretariat Situati, 2017) in order to plan measures to combat degradation/desertification and mitigate the effects of droughts. The UNCDD (ecretariat Situati, 2017) defines desertification as land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities. Land degradation is a result of these interrelations between hazards and vul- nerabilities and “means reduction or loss, of the biological or economic productivity and complexity of rain fed cropland, irrigated cropland, or range, pasture, forest and woodlands resulting from land uses or from a process or combination of processes, including processes arising from human activities and habitation patterns, such as: soil erosion caused by wind and/or water; deterioration of the physical, chemical and biological or economic properties of soil; and long-term loss of natural vegetation” (ecretariat Situati, 2017). In general, vulnerability might be defined as an internal risk factor of the subject or system that is exposed to a hazard and * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: rita.marcia@inpe.br, ritamsp@gmail.com (R.M.S.P. Vieira), marcelofsestini@gmail.com (M.F. Sestini), javier.tomasella@cemaden.gov.br (J. Tomasella), victor.marchezini@cemaden.gov.br (V. Marchezini), guilhermereis.pereira@gmail.com (G.R. Pereira), alexandre.barbosa@inpe.br (A.A. Barbosa), fabricia.santos@inpe.br (F.C. Santos), daniel.andres@coc.ufrj.br (D.A. Rodriguez), flaviorn@yahoo.com.br (F.R. do Nascimento), marcos.o.santana@gmail.com (M.O. Santana), fbarretocampello@gmail.com (F.C. Barreto Campello), jean.ometto@inpe.br (J.P.H.B. Ometto). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Environmental and Sustainability Indicators journal homepage: www.journals.elsevier.com/environmental-and-sustainability-indicators/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2019.100016 Received 20 May 2019; Received in revised form 10 December 2019; Accepted 11 December 2019 Available online 13 December 2019 2665-9727/© 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc-nd/4.0/). Environmental and Sustainability Indicators 5 (2020) 100016