Implementing a comprehensive approach for evaluating significance and disturbance in protected karst areas to guide management strategies

•We develop a tool to assess the karst protected areas significance and disturbance.•Its application to the Aralar Natural Park allows us to verify its validity.•The most significant and disturbed areas of the Park were identified.•The results comparison with the current Land use highlights the management needs.

Many environmental studies have acquired an almost exclusively biotic perspective over the years, neglecting important key land characteristics like those of a geological and hydrological nature. This situation leads to incomplete, and even inappropriate, management strategies, particularly unjustified in the case of karst environments which form the basis of important protected areas around the world and are inherently very fragile environments compared to other natural systems. This study presents a holistic methodological approach to analyse the level of significance and disturbance in the Natural Park of Aralar (Basque Country, northern Spain) using two standardized indices: zonal Karst Significance Index (KSIZ) and zonal Karst Disturbance Index (KDIZ). The distribution of both indices in the park is based on the Geographic Information System (GIS). Thus, thematic maps regarding geological, geomorphological, biological, hydrological and cultural aspects provide the essential data for this work. The obtained results enable us to recognize the most significant and disturbed sectors of the park. These indices are subsequently combined to generate the Priority Management Index (PMI), which determine the different management needs of the territory. This comprehensive information not only serves efforts to better manage protected karst areas, but also to provide a snapshot view of the researched area to compare achieved results over time.