Author(s)

Flor Magali Aguilar López^1*, Dayana Almeida¹, Yuri Tavares Rocha², Eliziane Carla Scariot³, Waldir José Gaspar⁴, Roberto Bonifaz Alfonzo⁵, Elisabete Maria Zanin⁶, Alberto Carvalho Peret¹, José Eduardo Dos Santos¹

¹Universidade Federal de São Carlos, São Carlos, Brazil.
²Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
³InstitutoFederal de São Paulo, Matão, Brazil.
⁴Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso, Cuiabá, Brazil.
⁵Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México City, México.
⁶Universidade Regional Integrada do Alto Uruguai e das Missões, Erechim, Brazil.

The intensification of anthropic uses (i.e., increase of the hemerobic condition) threatens the remnants of native vegetation due to the reduction of its self-regulation capacity. In this research, the Distance to Nature (D2N) index for land use and land cover was applied in the Río Grande de Comitán watershed (Southern Mexico) to answer the following questions: 1) What were the land use dynamics observed in the Rio Grande de Comitán watershed in the trajectory through 1999, 2009 and 2019? 2) Does the subcategorization of the D2N allow one to identify which anthropic uses influence more the territorial expression of the watershed? To answer these questions, we performed a supervised classification of land use and land cover was performed in this watershed, and for the D2N index, the classification was simplified to three-category scale for the subcategorization of the anthropic component. Through Principal Component Analysis (PCA), we identified that agricultural anthropogenic use had the greatest influence on territorial expression. The reported scenario indicates a trend of gradual and continuous reduction of naturalness over the last 20 years. Additionally, the D2N index proved to be a useful tool to demonstrate both the anthropic impact, with the simplified scale, and the component that most influences the territory, by subcategorizing the anthropic scale.

Anthropic Land-Use Pressures, Spatio-Temporal, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Environmental Planning, Nature Conservation

López, F. , Almeida, D. , Rocha, Y. , Scariot, E. , Gaspar, W. , Alfonzo, R. , Zanin, E. , Peret, A. and Santos, J. (2022) Application of the Distance to Natural (D2N) Index and Statistical Analysis of Different Anthropic Uses of the Río Grande De Comitán Watershed, Chiapas, México. Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, 10, 225-235. doi: 10.4236/gep.2022.1011015.