<p><strong>Background:</strong> The growth of the urban slick represents one of the most significant challenges to territorial planning in karst territories. This growth undermines the city's planning systems, generating irregular settlements, disarticulated human settlements, lack of services, coupled with ignorance of ecosystems, a situation that is typical of cities in the northeast of the Yucatan peninsula. The absence of a knowledge system of the physiographic characteristics of the territory has overlooked the karst characteristics of this region, adapting the buildings to a highly complex urban system. <strong>Objective:</strong> This work aims to develop a model for the recognition of karst depressions and its assessment based on the use of urban land in order to guide karst action policies in the city. <strong>Methodology:</strong> The study was carried out in the city of Cozumel, Mexico. For this, the cartographic bases were developed in order to recognize the depression units in the city, which were derived from data from seven INEGI LiDAR datasets, with a resolution of 5 m in the horizontal axis, constructing a mosaic dataset that covers the urban stain of the city. Through a management of the original LAS data, an altitude contour map (from 0 to 17 meters) was modeled with an equidistance of 0.25 cm in the vertical axis and with polygons of 25m2 of resolution; subsequently, the positive and negative level contours (depressions) were differentiated. Which were characterized and differentiated by their origin (natural or anthropogenic), type (sinkhole, uvala or polje), depth (from 0.25 to 4.5 m), land use and population density at the city block level. <strong>Results</strong>: 1,219 depressions were recognized, of which 59% are orbed and orbed to oval sinkholes with less than 1 m depth. Four sectors of the city are distinguished with medium and high housing density, high population density and high density of depressions (between 50 and 90%).<strong> </strong><strong>Implications</strong>: The identification of the units is based on the principles of remote perception and geographic information systems, so that some spatial units will be over-estimated in their number or underestimated in their territorial context of the urban area of the city of Cozumel. <strong>Conclusions:</strong> Most of the sinkholes and uvalas are located in private and business properties (mainly nurseries, ornamental gardens and water vending), government (in the form of theme parks, within land and public parks) and in vacant lots (most are characterized by being open-air dumps) and about 30% is located in the road system. The present analysis model can be implemented in all the northern cities of Quintana Roo under an ecosystem services scheme of these karst units.</p>

El espacio se declaró Área Natural Protegida (ANP) desde 1996 y en el año 2000, se determinó su recategorización como Parque Nacional Arrecifes de Cozumel (PNAC). Desde su creación ya existían servicios turísticos en su área de influencia, mismos que se han incrementado con el paso de los años. La metodología consistió en la revisión de literatura vinculada con el tema, realización de cinco talleres con permisionarios y cooperativistas, 12 entrevistas a informantes clave,  cuatro recorridos  en la zona de estudio y área de influencia para levantamiento de datos georreferenciados y llenado de fichas de observación. El objetivo fue revelar la organización territorial y el aprovechamiento turístico en el PNAC, entre los resultados se encontró una fuerte intensidad de las actividades turístico recreativas en las zonas arrecifales del PNAC, se destacan las fortalezas, oportunidades, debilidades y amenazas en el PNAC y como propuesta de organización del territorio, el establecimiento de unidades funcionales y nodos para el mejor aprovechamiento de los recursos en el ANP, se enfatiza una incompatibilidad entre la zonificación del programa de manejo vigente, con la concentración de las actividades turístico-recreativas que se practican en el área.

<p><strong>Background.</strong> The morphological study of the relief allows an adequate classification of the shape and structure of the karst relief developed over time. Nowadays, there is a classification of the karstic relief that differentiates the units according to the dimension of its X, Y axis, in 3 main categories: poljes, uvala and doline (compactness index). <strong>Objective.</strong> Analyze and classify the karst depressions of the area known as El Cedral, located on the island of Cozumel, Mexico, as an alternative in understanding the evolution of the insular relief of the Caribbean. <strong>Methodology.</strong> The karstic relief was analyzed from the construction of a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) obtained from the construction of a light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data mosaic, derived from the nearest neighbor interpolation method applied to a cloud of points generated from the LAS. This model has a data resolution of 5 m for the X, Y axes, and 0.50 cm for the z axis; 45 cenotes were georeferenced from the field database and another 190 depressions were identified through remote sensing, taking as a criterion a minimum depth of 1m; in addition, the longitudinal profiles were generated by interpolating altitude data through the X axis of the depression, and the longitudinal profile was visualized and interpreted, which was drawn manually in 232 depressions. <strong>Results.</strong> Thus, a typological of the depressions is presented, based on the morphology of the profile in plan (in "<strong>V</strong>", "<strong>U</strong>" and "<strong> LI</strong> " forms), the depth and the gradient of the slopes. The main results are: The major axis oscillates from 31 to 434 m, with an average of 106 m; the maximum depth is 10.75 m and the minimum is 1.45 m, being the average 7.60 m; In the configuration, it is recognized that 56% corresponds to depressions of type V, 27% of type U and 17% to box type profiles; these last one’s present bottom in contact with the phreatic mantle and 70% with processes of permanent flooding. <strong>Implications.</strong> Geomorphological analyses of this type applied to places of low altitude contrast are scarce, many applied on a larger scale, adapting to the inputs available. The closest classification to this type of study, based on the profiles, is done in valleys, where the scale is larger and the altitude contrast is much greater. <strong>Conclusions.</strong> The distribution of these depressions is of a radial nature, which highlights the dissolution process associated with the original geological structure.</p>

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