ANÁLISE DO ÍNDICE DE VEGETAÇÃO POR DIFERENÇA NORMALIZADA NOS MUNICÍPIOS PRODUTORES DE PÓ DE CARNAÚBA NO PIAUÍ E CEARÁ.

This study analyzes the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) of municipalities of Piauí and Ceará that extract carnauba dust, comparing it in the years in which the rainfall was similar and evaluates the growth rates of the economic activity and municipal population. For this purpose, the NDVI/MODIS images were used on the Embrapa website, pluviometry data, from National Institute for Space Research, ande economic and demographic variables, from Demographic Census. The images revealed suppression of vegetation in some localities, and this is due to the increase of the urbanization or the productive scale. Thus, it is important to monitor these areas to establish adequate public policies for the conservation of native vegetation, considering the risk of carnaúba removal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]