Mapping risk zones of potential erosion in the upper Nazas River basin, Mexico through spatial autocorrelation techniques

The identification and prioritization of high erosion-prone areas represent an important challenge at national and local levels to help the policymakers to propose correct interventions in land management issues. The main objective of this work was to analyze the spatial pattern of potential erosion in the upper Nazas River basin, for the identification of critical areas of soil loss. For that, Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) and the combination of both global (Moran’s I index) and local (Getis-Ord Gi*) spatial autocorrelation techniques were used. The results showed that most of the surface in the basin has low levels of erosion. However, there is a significant amount of surface with high, very high, and extreme erosion levels. The Moran’s I index revealed a significant positive spatial autocorrelation with a value of 0.3948, thus indicating a spatial pattern of potentially erosive clusters. The clustering types found through the local spatial autocorrelation test were hotspots and coldspots with statistically significant values (p ≤ 0.05), which allows us to identify those areas that are more vulnerable to more soil erosion. This provides policymakers and soil researchers with information on soil erosion processes at the local level, based on a reliable assessment of vulnerability and risk levels.