## 2 Materials and Methods
### Methods
CCI is calculated using the score obtained by completing the forms for establishing the impact on the environment of a cave, Rapid Assessment Protocol (RAP-cei) and the score obtained by completing the form to establish the vulnerability of a cave, in order to prioritize conservation and/or restoration actions [57]. Thus, for values between 0 and 34, the cave ecosystem was classified as natural, between 35 and 84 was semi-degraded, and over 85, it was classified as degraded [10]. River ecosystems were assessed based on 13 criteria, grouped into 4 major classes: A. Indicators of the human pressure on riparian areas (anthropization, vegetation cover, human settlements, sewage treatment plants, major pollution sources, transport network, natural protected areas), B. Indicators of substrate of the land adjacent to the watercourse (slope, soil permeability), C. Indicators associated with rivers (human interventions, ecological status of water bodies) and D. Indicators of the morphological complexity of water courses (sinusosity) [58]. Each indicator used in the multicriteria analysis was assigned a weight in the final analysis. The highest weights used in the multicriteria analysis for human pressure on riparian areas were as follows: the anthropization of the adjacent territory of a watercourse, vegetation cover in riparian areas, the presence of major pollution sources, the length of the transport network, human interventions in the riverbanks and the ecological status of water bodies [58]. The assessment of lake ecosystems was performed by combining the potential pollutant load (PPL) developed by [59], wastewater (W)-recreational (R)-agricultural (A)-size (S)-transportation (T)-industrial (I)-cover (C)-pollutant load (WRASTIC) [59] and lake vulnerability (LV) [60], resulting in a new index: WRASTIC-HI index [61; 62]. This methodological stage included the analysis of a total of 3189 lakes and their classification by degradation classes. The assessment of degradation status of the coastal ecosystem was made based on eight indicators, which can be grouped into biological indicators (related to the absence or presence of invasive species), hydro-morphological indicators (related to the presence of wastewater treatment plants, the presence of demographic aggregation poles, shoreline artificialization, shoreline erosion rate) and physical-chemical indicators, data related to transport infrastructure (road infrastructure, navigation channels) and intensity of maritime traffic. Each indicator was given a score, and the final result was obtained by summing all the scores [10]. Thus, in the terrestrial coastal area, score values \(\leq\)4 mean the coastal ecosystem is natural, between 5 and 12 it is semi-degraded and over 13 it is degraded, and in the marine coastal area, score values \(\leq\)5 mean the coastal ecosystem is natural, between 5 and 15 it is semi-degraded and over 13 it is degraded. In order to identify the location of the most degraded ecosystems, the density of each degraded ecosystem and the hotspot analysis based on the Getis-Ord Gi* [63; 64] was computed. The hotspot analysis was performed in ArcGIS using the Mapping Clusters tool [65], based on Equation (2) [66]. \[G_{i}^{*}=\frac{\sum_{j=1}^{n}w_{i,j}x_{j}-\overline{X}\sum_{j=1}^{n}w_{i,j}}{S \sqrt{\frac{\left[n\sum_{j=1}^{n}w_{i,j}^{2}-\left(\sum_{j=1}^{n}w_{i}\right)^ {2}\right]}{n-1}}} \tag{2}\]  
where \(G\_j^{*}\) statistics is a z-score, \(x_{j}\) is the attribute value for feature \(j\), \(w_{i,j}\) is the spatial weight between feature \(i\) and \(j\), \(n\) is equal to the total number of features and:  
\[\overline{X}=\frac{\sum_{j=1}^{n}x_{j}}{n} \tag{3}\]  
and  
\[S=\sqrt{\frac{\sum_{j=1}^{n}x_{j}}{n}-\left(\overline{X}\right)^{2}} \tag{4}\]  
The density values of each ecosystem were classified into five density classes, and each class was given a score from 1 to 5. Value 1 represents very low density, 2--low density, 3--medium, 4--high, and 5--very high density.