Oued El Maleh watershed is considered the largest ocean basin of the Chaouia-Ouardigha region in Morocco. Severe flooding occurred in 1996, 2001 and 2002 in the watershed. Thus, significant economic and human damage has been caused. The floods of Mohammedia city, located in the outlet of the watershed, were due to the silting of the Oued El Maleh dam which has lost its ability to retain water. This work, therefore, aims to assess soil losses by water erosion in the Oued El Maleh watershed through modeling main factors involved in water erosion. The methodology used is based on the use of the universal soil loss equation (USLE). The model includes the following factors: soil erodibility, the inclination of slopes, the rainfall erosivity, vegetation cover and erosion control practices. The aggressiveness of rainfall was calculated for a number of stations bordering the study area and interpolated across the watershed using geostatistical model. Soil erodibility was extracted from soil map and soil survey. The effect of topography was approached by combining the degree of slope and slope length using a digital elevation model (ASTER) and ArcHydrology extension (ArcGIS). The vegetation cover was derived from Landsat image ETM through the supervised classification method. The index of erosion control practices was approached by field visits. All factors have been measured and integrated into a geographic information system which enabled us to spatialize the degree of sediment production at the watershed scale in a synthetic map. The annual soil loss is 8.21 t/ha/yr and the soil loss classification shows that surfaces affected by high erosion are equivalent to 10% of the watershed. Furthermore, this map is available to support land managers policy makers in the process of decision making related to soil conservation, infrastructure and citizens' property protection.
Along with being a dynamic process that affects large areas, desertification is also one of the most serious problems in many countries. The effects of this phenomenon threaten the sustainability of natural resources, namely water resources, agricultural production and major basic infrastructure, specifically roads and habitations. Several factors exacerbate this phenomenon such as the climate dryness, the geological and morphological characteristics of the terrain, the irrational use of space, population growth and the over-exploitation of vegetation and water resources. This work aims to evaluate the desertification index in the Oued-El-Maleh watershed, through the integration of key factors involved in the MEDALUS model (Mediterranean Desertification and Land Use) within a GIS. The model includes among its indexes: climate, vegetation, soil and management. Each index was obtained by the combination of sub-indexes. All the factors, measured and integrated into a geographic information system, enabled us to spatialize, on a synthetic map, the degree of the desertification effect throughout the watershed. This map is a managing tool available for decision-making regarding the selection of priority areas in the fight against desertification. High sensitivity to desertification class represents only 35% of the watershed. This class is concentrated in the north of the study area that corresponds to plains and low altitude. This could be explained by the dominance of agro-pastoral activity and the presence of a big population pressure.
Maâmora is considered the most important cork-oak forest in the world with regard to surface. Therefore, anthropic pressure, including cork harvesting, grazing and soft acorn picking up by local communities, has harmful consequences on forest regeneration and the forest become older exceeding harvesting age. Thus, its sustainability depends on the managers' ability to succeed cork oak plantations. This work presents an assessment approach to evaluate Quercus suber suitability to its plantation which is based on a random forest algorithm (RF). In fact, this suitability has been assessed through analyzing management data related to previous plantation success rates (SR). Then a relationship between SR and a set of environmental and social factors has been investigated using the RF. Application of the fitted model to continuous maps of all involved factors enabled establishment of suitability maps which would help managers to make more rational decisions in terms of cork oak regeneration, ensuring Maâmora forest sustainability.
Unmanaged livestock grazing is the greatest threat to the health and sustainability of forest rangelands in Morocco. Historically, communities have developed ingenious traditional systems in order to regulate natural resource uses. However, currently most of these principles have been undermined and have led to open access of a common pool resource. To achieve viable solutions to unmanaged livestock grazing in forestlands, local community involvement was introduced in Moroccan forestry early on. The main objective of this study was to show the importance of an original mechanism called compensation on forest area closed to grazing, carried out by the Forestry Department to involve communities that have the right of use in the restoration of forest rangeland ecosystems. It also aims to assess the mechanism’s technical and socioeconomic impacts. Analysis of the process of community participation in the case of Moroccan forest management revealed that it was perceived and implemented in different ways, and considered either as an end in itself or (rarely) as a means to an end. Forest managers and use-rights holders appreciate the mechanism of compensation for forest areas closed to grazing. Since the implementation of this program, the number of grazing association members has increased. This trend has been associated with a positive impact on the reduction in the number of offences and on improving reforestation success rates. In addition, remote sensing showed a positive trend in the relative density and the evolution of the health of vegetation in the areas covered by this mechanism. This program helped to develop consensus in forest ecosystem restoration that will help managers to break the vicious cycle of unmanaged grazing, and promote a new collective stewardship of this precious land. As a result of this success, this program should be replicated and valued. It should be presented in the future as a tool for natural resource conservation with unintended human capital development benefits.
Peri-urban forests are subject to different dynamics due to several factors. Nfifikh forest is a man-made space, located in suburban of Mohammedia City, belonging to Casablanca, Settat Region, and geographically between Casablanca, the economic and business Capital of Morocco and Rabat, the national political capital. Over the past three decades, it has experienced several significant degradations. The aim of this study is to evaluate and quantify the deforestation within the study area using a forest cover change detection of various vegetation indices and subpixel classification to pick out high density plots with Landsat images TM, ETM + and OLI. Remote sensing is used to highlight the changes caused through Space-Time. This monitoring might help managers to generate forest management plans and to moderate the speed of deforestation and degradation. The results show a significant change in vegetation cover detected between 1987 and 2015. The Density increased in 2001 while it decreased considerably in 2015.
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