Biophysical landscapes of the Río La Virgen watershed in the Ocosingo municipality, Chiapas, Mexico

Abstract

The Río La Virgen watershed is located in the northwestern end of the municipality of Ocosingo, Chiapas, Mexico. This hydrographical unit is home to the city of Ocosingo. The objective of this research was to characterize the Biophysical landscapes that constitute the basin at the scale of 1:50 000. To achieve this goal, data on the biophysical components was compiled.This research defined five taxonomic typological levels: 3 classes, 10 subclasses, 22 localities, 52 land areas, and 213 sub-land areas. The main differentiating factors of the landscapes are the tectonics processes, which generate tectonic-karstic and tectonic-accumulative mountains; however, the inventory also reports landscapes of fluvio-torrential and fluvio-accumulative origin in temperate humid, semi-warm humid, and warm humid climates. The landscapes of tectonic-karstic and tectonic-accumulative origin cover over 85.42% of the surface area of the basin; by contrast, the Biophysical Landscapes of fluvial-accumulative and fluvial-torrential cover only 14.85%.

Keywords

• Biophysical landscape
• tectonic-karstic
• tectonic-accumulative
• river watershed
• Chiapas
• Mexico