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.

确定和优先考虑高度易受侵蚀的地区是国家和地方层面的一项重要挑战，以帮助决策者针对土地管理问题提出正确的干预措施。这项工作的主要目的是分析纳扎斯河流域上游潜在侵蚀的空间格局，以确定土壤流失的关键区域。为此，使用了通用土壤流失方程 (USLE) 以及全局（Moran's I指数）和局部（Getis-Ord Gi*）空间自相关技术的组合。结果表明，盆地大部分地表的侵蚀程度较低。然而，有大量的表面具有高、非常高和极端的侵蚀水平。莫兰的我指数显示出显着的正空间自相关，值为 0.3948，因此表明潜在侵蚀集群的空间模式。通过局部空间自相关测试发现的聚类类型是具有统计显着值 ( p  ≤ 0.05) 的热点和冷点，这使我们能够识别那些更容易受到更多土壤侵蚀的区域。基于对脆弱性和风险水平的可靠评估，这为决策者和土壤研究人员提供了有关地方层面土壤侵蚀过程的信息。