Context:

Water is essential for life and conservation of water quality is vital. The amount of fresh water on earth is limited and its quality is subject to constant pressure. This problem makes it necessary to present tools that allow quantifying the possible impacts generated by human activities in this resource. Therefore, this research determines the water footprint in the coastal area of San Blas, Mexico.

Method:

This work estimates the water footprint in the coastal area of he municipality of San Blas, Nayarit, Mexico, according to the method of water scarcity that occurs when demand exceeds the supply of fresh water in a given area. This method considers the water stress index in its calculation.

Results:

The result shows that the water footprint to quantify the total volume of water used by the inhabitants is less than the national average. In this way, the study area does not present water stress, since the extraction of water has not exceeded its availability.

Conclusions:

The water footprint by the scarcity method can be considered as an indicator of the proportion of annual withdrawals and water availability; It allows comparisons of the pressure to which the water resource is subjected between zones, regions and countries. In addition, it can contribute to the planning of the distribution and management of water in agricultural and urban use, in regions such as this study, where the area of agricultural use exceeds 35%. The estimation of the water footprint presented in this work considers the relationship between the extraction of fresh water for human use and its total water availability in a given region (WSI), the volume distributed and the percentage of drinking water coverage of the area in study.