Desertification is a global problem that impacts a significative part of the Earth's surface, which cause a large environmental and social losses in several regions of the world. The Brazilian semiarid region, located mainly in the northeast part of the country, includes areas of moderate to very high susceptibility to desertification. In order to contribute to a comprehension of the dimensions of desertification in the Brazilian semiarid region, this paper aimed to develop a potential indicator for the evaluation and monitoring of this area, considering an appropriate temporal and spatial scales. For this objective, satellite data were used for the identification and monitoring of sub-areas potentially undergoing degradation/desertification. Thus multitemporal series of Enhanced Vegetation Index 2 (EVI2) covering the period between 2000 and 2016 was used, which were calculated from data provided by the MODIS sensor carried aboard the Terra satellite. Besides, previous samples were selected for the calibration and validation of the methodology. The results show an increase of areas potentially undergoing degradation/desertification, covering an area equal to 167,814.24 km² at the end of the period analyzed (around 16.7% of the study area). Approximately 23.63% of the total degraded area comprises both the Very High Degradation Trajectory and High Degradation Trajectory. The proposed methodology contributed to the determination of the degree of the degradation through the determination of Degradation Trajectories, which differentiates it from the ones proposed in other studies; however, it is emphasized that this approach must be analyzed in association with additional information, such as trends and climatic scenarios of land use and land cover, as well as retrospective analyses of the landscape, soil erosion, field recognition, socioeconomic conditions, among others.

荒漠化是一个全球性问题，影响着地球表面的重要部分，在世界多个地区造成了巨大的环境和社会损失。巴西半干旱地区主要位于该国东北部，其中包括中度到非常高的沙漠化敏感性地区。为了有助于理解巴西半干旱地区的荒漠化范围，本文旨在考虑适当的时空尺度，为该地区的评估和监测开发一种潜在的指标。为了这个目标，卫星数据被用于识别和监视可能正在退化/荒漠化的分区。因此，使用了涵盖2000年至2016年期间的多时相增强植被指数2（EVI2）系列，这些序列是根据Terra卫星上搭载的MODIS传感器提供的数据计算得出的。此外，还选择了以前的样品进行方法的校准和验证。结果表明，潜在的退化/荒漠化面积增加，覆盖面积等于167,814.24 km在分析期结束时占²（占研究区域的16.7％左右）。总降解面积的约23.63％包含极高降解轨迹和极高降解轨迹。所提出的方法有助于通过确定降解轨迹来确定降解程度，这与其他研究中提出的方法有所不同。但是，需要强调的是，必须结合其他信息来分析这种方法，例如土地使用和土地覆盖的趋势和气候情景，以及景观，土壤侵蚀，田野识别，社会经济状况等的回顾性分析。 。