In coastal regions, the combined effects of natural processes, human activity, and climate change have caused shoreline changes that may increase in the future. The assessment of these changes is essential for forecasting their future position for proper management. In this context, shoreline changes in the Gulf of California (GC), Mexico, have received little attention and no previous studies have addressed future forecasting. In this study, the researchers assessed the historical shoreline changes to forecast the long-term shoreline positions. To address this, shoreline data were obtained from Landsat satellite images for the years 1981, 1993, 2004, 2010, and 2020. The Net Shoreline Movement (NSM), Linear Regression Rate (LRR), End Point Rate (EPR), and Weighted Linear Regression (WLR) geo-spatial techniques were applied to estimate the shoreline change rate by using a Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) in the GIS environment. A Kalman filter model was used to forecast the position of the shoreline for the years 2030 and 2050. The results show that approximately 72% of the GC shoreline is undergoing steady erosion, and this trend is continuing in the future. This study has provided valuable and comprehensive baseline information on the state of the shoreline in the GC that can guide coastal engineers, coastal managers, and policymakers in Mexico to manage the risk. It also provides both long-term and large-scale continuous datasets that are essential for future studies focused on improving the shoreline forecast models.

The last ten years have shown that Climate Change (CC) is a major global issue to attend to. The integration of its effects into coastal impact assessments and adaptation plans has gained great attention and interest, focused on avoiding or minimizing human lives and asset losses. Future scenarios of mean sea level rises and wave energy increase rates have then been computed, but downscaling still remains necessary to assess the possible local effects in small areas. In this context, the effects of CC on the wave climate in the Gulf of California (GC), Mexico, have received little attention, and no previous studies have tackled the long-term trend of wave climate at a regional scale. In this paper, the long-term trends of the wave height, wave period and wave energy in the GC were thus investigated, using the fifth-generation climate reanalysis dataset (ERA5). The long-term shoreline evolution was also examined from historical Landsat images, so as to identify erosional hotspots where intervention can be prioritized. The results indicate that both the mean and extreme wave regimes in the GC are getting more energetic and that two-thirds of the coast is suffering chronic erosion. A discrepancy between the trends of the wave period and wave height in some regions of the Gulf was also found. Finally, the importance of natural processes, human activity and CC in the shoreline change is highlighted, while addressing the need for future permanent field observations and studies in the GC.

Arid and semiarid regions are geographic units that cover approximately 43% of the earth’s surface worldwide, and conditions of extreme drought and reduced vegetation cover predominate in these regions. In Mexico, arid and semiarid ecosystems cover more than half of the territory, with desertification, mainly caused by anthropogenic activities and climatic events, as the main problem in these regions. The present research aimed to assess, identify, and classify arid and semiarid zones by employing a methodology based on multicriteria evaluation analysis (MCA) using the weighted linear combination (WLC) technique and geographic information systems (GIS) in the hydrological administrative regions (HARs) of the North Pacific, Northwest, and Baja California Peninsula, located in Northwest Mexico. Data related to aridity, desertification, degradation, and drought were investigated, and the main factors involved in the aridity process, such as surface temperature, soil humidity, precipitation, slopes, orientations, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and evapotranspiration, were obtained. For the standardization of factors, a fuzzy inference system was used. The weight of each factor was then determined with the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). To delimit arid regions, the classification of arid zones proposed by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) was used, and the result was an aridity suitability map. To validate the results, the sensitivity analysis method was applied. Quantitative and geospatial aridity indicators were obtained at the administrative hydrological level and by state. The main results indicated that semiarid and dry subhumid zones predominated, representing 40% and 43% of the surface of the study area, respectively, while arid regions represented 17%, and humid regions represented less than 1%. In addition, of the states for which 100% of the surface lay in the study area, it was observed that Baja California and Baja California Sur had the largest arid and semiarid zones, while subhumid regions predominated in Sonora and Sinaloa.

The present study focuses on identifying and describing the possible proximate and underlying causes of deforestation and its factors using the combination of two techniques: (1) specialized consultation and (2) spatial logistic regression modeling. These techniques were implemented to characterize the deforestation process qualitatively and quantitatively, and then to graphically represent the deforestation process from a temporal and spatial point of view. The study area is the North Pacific Basin, Mexico, from 2002 to 2014. The map difference technique was used to obtain deforestation using the land-use and vegetation maps. A survey was carried out to identify the possible proximate and underlying causes of deforestation, with the aid of 44 specialized government officials, researchers, and people who live in the surrounding deforested areas. The results indicated total deforestation of 3938.77 km² in the study area. The most important proximate deforestation causes were agricultural expansion (53.42%), infrastructure extension (20.21%), and wood extraction (16.17%), and the most important underlying causes were demographic factors (34.85%), economics factors (29.26%), and policy and institutional factors (22.59%). Based on the spatial logistic regression model, the factors with the highest statistical significance were forestry productivity, the slope, the altitude, the distance from population centers with fewer than 2500 inhabitants, the distance from farming areas, and the distance from natural protected areas.

Deforestation is an anthropic phenomenon that negatively affects the environment and therefore the climate, the carbon cycle, biodiversity and the sustainability of agriculture and drinking water sources. Deforestation is counteracted by reforestation processes, which is caused by the natural regeneration of forests or by the establishment of plantations. The present research is focused on generating a simulation model to predict the deforestation and reforestation for 2030 and 2050 using geospatial analysis techniques and multicriteria evaluation. The case study is the North Pacific Basin, which is one of the areas with the greatest loss of forest cover in Mexico. The results of the spatial analysis of forest dynamics determined that the forest area in 2030 would be 98,713.52 km², while in 2050 would be 101,239.8 km². The mean annual deforestation and reforestation expected in the study area is 115 and 193.84 km², for the 2014–2030 period, while mean annual deforestation and reforestation values of 95 and 221.31 km² are expected for the 2030–2050 period. Therefore, considering the forest cover predicted by the deforestation and reforestation model, a carbon capture of 16,209.67 ton/C was estimated for the 2014–2030 period and 587,596.01 ton/C for the 2030–2050.