La evaluación de la antropización de los paisajes en áreas naturales protegidas mediante indicadores cuantitativos: Estudio de caso en la Zona de Protección Ambiental Pico Azul-La Escalera, México

[Introduction]: The process of anthropization involves transformations that lead to changes in the composition, structure, functioning, dynamics, and evolution of landscapes. Its evaluation is essential for measuring the impacts caused by human activities in natural protected areas. [Methodology]: The research proposes taking as a case study the Pico Azul-La Escalera Environmental Protection Zone, in Mexico, and as a spatial unit, the anthroponatural landscapes. The comparative analysis of the results evaluates anthropization for this territory, using indices degree of naturalness (Gn) of Bollo and Velazco; index of anthropization of the vegetation cover (IACV) of Shishenko; coefficient of anthropogenic transformation of Shishenko (KAN); land degradation index (LDI) of Rulev, and degree of hemerobia (M) of Steinhardt and collaborators. [Results]: Of the 5 indices evaluated, only the KAN and the M offer congruent results when compared with the 5 categories established a priori, using the statistical method of natural breakdown, with a correspondence of more than 90 and 98.53 %, respectively. The worst results corresponded to the land degradation index, the anthropization of vegetation cover index and the degree of naturalness with 46.32 %, 52.2 % and 53.68 %, respectively. [Conclusions]: The results obtained here on M can contribute to generalizing its application to categorize the ranges resulting from applying this indicator in natural protected areas from being the one that offers the best results by the method of distribution of the categories.