A WISDOM analysis was conducted in Mexico in order to: (1) identify fuelwood (FW) hot spots in terms of residential FW use and availability of FW resources for the year 2000, and (2) estimate net CO2 emissions from the non-renewable use of FW. WISDOM (woodfuel integrated supply/demand overview mapping) is a spatially explicit method, based on geographic information system (GIS) technology, which ranks a set of spatial units according to a group of indicators, in order to identify woodfuel priority areas or woodfuel hot spots. A comprehensive analysis was conducted, integrating full coverage national data on land cover classes, land cover change maps (1993-2000), geo-referenced population censuses (1990 and 2000), and a meticulous review of the international literature and Mexican case studies. Following a spatial multi-criteria analysis, 2395 counties (out of a country total of 2424 in year 2000) were ranked based on the number, density and annual growth rate of FW users; the percentage of households that use FW; the resilience of FW consumption, and the magnitude and likely trends of FW forest resources. The WISDOM analysis allowed the identification of 304 high priority counties (HPC), which showed a spatially aggregated pattern into 16 clusters. HPC cover 4% of Mexican territory and represent 27% of total FW consumption. We estimated that 1.3 Tg CO2 y(-1) are released to the atmosphere by non-renewable FW burning, a value that represents less than 1% of Mexican total annual CO2 emissions in 2002. The results of the analysis show that WISDOM is a useful tool for both focusing resources to critical areas where action is more needed and to obtain more accurate estimates of the impacts associated to FW use. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.