New sand stabilization index of sand encroachment around green belts in Gourara, southwest of Algeria
- PDF / 2,623,463 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 87 Downloads / 189 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
New sand stabilization index of sand encroachment around green belts in Gourara, southwest of Algeria Ould Safi Mohammed 1,2
&
Haddouche Driss 1
Received: 30 August 2018 / Accepted: 20 February 2019 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2019
Abstract In the Saharan regions of Algeria, the phenomenon of sand encroachment is the main cause of the degradation of the physical environment as well as the biological resources. It represents an impediment against all forms of socio-economic activities. In the past, fighting sand encroachment in the region of Gourara (southwest of Algeria) was carried out through ancestral processes like fences and small clay walls. Since 2007, this region has witnessed the plantation of several green belts, planted by the forest services as a part of the biological fight against this phenomenon. The present study evaluates the effectiveness of these green belts in the fight against sand encroachment by the application of a new index of sand stabilization (ISS). The calculation of this index is performed with two factors: the rate of recovery and the height of sand accumulations stabilized inside the green belts. In addition, the status of this index was determined by two parameters: the calculated index value and the field of observation. Thus, a positive validation of effectiveness of this index has been found after its application on different cases of green belts. The multivariate analysis (PCA) of 60 sand encroachment surveys on the three studied green belts (BVO, BVD, BVG) enabled to distinguish three groups of surveys, according to both the values recovery rate and the height of sand accumulations. This new index has allowed to represent the sand stabilization situation of each green belt. Thus, three situations were found: weak, average, and strong stabilization. Keywords Algeria . Gourara . Sand encroachment . Green belt . Socioeconomic
Introduction The arid lands cover 41% of the surface of the globe where two billion of people live. These people are confronted to considerable challenges, especially those posed by desertification, the lack of the biodiversity, poverty, food insecurity, and climatic changes (FAO 2016). The Wind erosion is a very active phenomenon in arid and semi-arid countries (Elghannouchi 2007). It results when the pedological, climatic, and vegetation conditions are favorable, in particular, soil that is not compact, dry, and rich in sandy matter, with a rare
Editorial Handling: Ali M. Al-Dousari * Ould Safi Mohammed [email protected] 1
Laboratory N31, Conservation Management of Water, Soil and Forests Sustainable Mountain Development in the Region of Tlemcen, Department of Forest Resources, Faculty of SNV-STU, University of Tlemcen, B.P.119, 1300 Tlemcen, Algeria
2
National Institute of Forestry Research, Adrar station, Algeria
vegetation and the wind speed which is strong enough to displace the soil particles (Makhlouf et al. 2013). According to Haddouche (2009), nearly 7.2 million people living in semi-arid and arid regions in Alg
Data Loading...
