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Abstract Cashew crops are of great importance to small landholders in many tropical countries and grow in harsh semiarid climatic and soil conditions. Cashew crops have been economically and socially relevant in the Brazilian semiarid region since the 1960s, when governmental policies oriented to exportation began to encourage cashew nut production in large monoculture fields. Since then, cashew cultivation has been expanded by the nut industry and, recently, small settlement farmers have started to cultivate dwarf cashew tree clones. The focus of cashew cultivation also moved from the nut extraction in standard trees to the removal of the peduncle in dwarf species. In the present study, we undertook a historical review of governmental policies oriented to the establishment of cashew crops in Pio IX, Piauí, and the resulting patterns of land use within the landscape, obtained from high-resolution image classification. We noted that dwarf cashew cultivation was significant in government settlement projects, as was secondary vegetation recovery in largely abandoned areas. This vegetation recovery enhances the protection of Caatinga fragments and the restoration of relevant ecosystem services. Based on the land use patterns, we proposed an initial characterization of cashew farmers to suggest possible pathways for restoration of the Caatinga biome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of medium-sized cities in Brazil has increased significantly since the 80–90's decades. In that period, most of the urbanization process was represented by the agglomeration of the population in the major metropolitan areas such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Nowadays, the rural-urban movement in Brazil is predominantly affecting cities with less than 1 million inhabitants, located particularly in the Center-West and in the Semiarid Northeast regions. The city of Teresina, the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Piauí, is one example that has shown an accelerated process of urban development. In this context, this paper seeks to discuss the urban sprawl of Teresina over the last four decades (1974–2014), associating its trends of urban expansion and population growth with their social and environmental implications. The results of our work indicate that urban sprawl in Teresina has been continuous over the years and getting faster in the 2010–2014 period. High demographic density areas are located mostly in peripheral zones, where the low-income population dominates. The population density varies across the city, and it is far from the standard proposed by the urban legislation. Thus, urbanization in Teresina is characterized by the sprawl of its municipal boundaries, intra-urban densification and verticalization, and an increase in population, especially in areas of low-income neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]