INTRODUCTION. Animal production system based on rangeland are very complex being its management closely related to the functioning of the ecosystem in which it is supoorted. For assessing the environmental impact of livestock management many variables need to be considered, making difficult and expensive to obtain a comprehensive overview of the ecosystem state and evolution. Therefore a qualitative and quantitative assessment tool was developed in order to evaluate the integrity of the ecosystem under productive use that may be applied in a simple and practical process. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of the index in real production systems that were part of a participatory research project.