article · Land
Satellite remote sensing and geographic information systems were used to track land use and land cover changes across the Ziz Oasis agroecosystem in Errachidia, southeastern Morocco, over a thirty-year period from 1991 to 2022. Using Landsat imagery analysed at five-year intervals alongside vegetation and water indices, the study mapped five distinct environmental classes with classification accuracy exceeding ninety per cent. The analysis revealed severe environmental degradation, with desertified terrain tripling between 2011 and 2022, expanding from 20.62 per cent to 58.49 per cent of the area. Over the full thirty-year evaluation, cultivated farmland dropped from 174.2 square kilometres to 82.2 square kilometres. Water index data confirmed that oasis decline downstream from the Hassan Eddakhil dam towards Er-Rissani was closely linked to upstream reservoir levels, with ongoing drought and excessive groundwater extraction driving the worsening desertification.
Oasis agroecosystems are vital for agriculture and community livelihoods in arid pre-Saharan regions. Quantifying thirty years of land cover transformation demonstrates the scale of environmental degradation caused by drought and excessive water extraction. This evidence provides critical spatial data for natural resource authorities and environmental planners working to slow desertification, manage fragile water resources, and meet international sustainable land management targets.
This research provides an applied monitoring framework rather than a commercial product. The primary users are public sector decision-makers, environmental planners, and regional water authorities who manage arid ecosystems and groundwater reserves. Although it represents applied environmental analysis rather than near-market software, the methodology and Landsat time-series classifications could be integrated into commercial environmental consulting services, natural resource management platforms, or spatial decision-support tools for arid agriculture.
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Remote sensing (RS) data and geographic information system (GIS) techniques were used to monitor the changes in the Oasis agroecosystem of the pre-Saharan province of Errachidia, southeastern Morocco. The land use and land cover (LULC) change of the agroecosystem of this province was processed using Landsat time series with 5-year intervals of the last thirty years. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and the maximum likelihood classification (MLC) were categorized into five classes, including water bodies, cultivated land, bare land, built-up, and desertified land. The overall accuracy of the MLC maps was estimated to be higher than 90%. The finding showed a degradation trend represented by an increase in desertified lands, which tripled in the ten last years, passing from 20.62% in 2011 to 58.49% in 2022. The findings also depicted a decreasing trend in the cultivated area in this period passing from 174.2 km2 in 1991 to 82.2 km2 in 2022. Using NDWI, Landsat images from 1991 to 2021 depicted a strong association between the water reserve in Hassan Eddakhil dam in the upstream area and the LULC changes. The oases from the dam (upstream) to Er-Rissani (downstream) recorded high rates of decline with an increasing trend of desertification due to drought and overuse mainly of groundwater. The outputs of this research effort constitute a significant source of information that may be used to support further research and decision-makers to manage arid ecosystems and achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs), precisely the SDGs 15 (Life on land).
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DOI: 10.3390/land12122127
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