Geography and Development group, Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Martil, Morocco.
Economic and Environmental Geology and Hydrology Group, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Sci Total Environ. 2021 Apr 10;764:142853. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142853. Epub 2020 Oct 9.
In coastal watersheds, services and landuse favour coastal tourism and urbanization, depriving rural upstream of infrastructure and attention. This unbalanced management leads to an intensification of socioeconomic changes that generate a structural heterogeneity of the landscape and a reduction in the livelihoods of the rural population. The incessant dissociation between the objectives of the stakeholders triggers landuse-environment-economy conflicts which threaten to mutate large-scale development programs. Here, we used multi-assessment techniques in a Mediterranean watershed from Morocco to evaluate the effects of landuse change on water, vegetation, and perception of the rural population towards environmental issues. We combined complementary vegetation indexes (NDVI and EVI) to study long-term landuse change and phenological statistical pixel-based trends. We assessed the exposure of rural households to the risk of groundwater pollution through a water analysis supplemented by the calculation of an Integrated Water Quality Index. Later, we contrasted the findings with the results of a social survey with a representative sample of 401 households from 7 villages. We found that rapid coastal linear urbanization has resulted in a 12-fold increase in construction over the past 35 years, to the detriment of natural spaces and the lack of equipment and means in rural areas upstream. We show that the worst water qualities are linked to the negative impact of anthropogenic activities on immediately accessible water points. We observe that rural households are aware of the existence and gravity of environmental issues but act confusedly because of their low education level which generates a weak capacity to understand cause and effect relationships. We anticipate the pressing need to improve the well-being and education of the population and synergistically correct management plans to target the watershed as a consolidated system. Broadly, stakeholders should restore lost territorial harmony and reallocate landuse according to a sustainable environment-socioeconomic vision.
在沿海流域，服务和土地利用有利于沿海旅游业和城市化，使农村上游地区缺乏基础设施和关注。这种不平衡的管理导致社会经济变化加剧，从而导致景观结构异质性和农村人口生计减少。利益相关者目标之间的不断脱节引发了土地利用-环境-经济冲突，这些冲突有可能使大规模发展计划发生变异。在这里，我们使用多评估技术在摩洛哥的一个地中海流域评估土地利用变化对水、植被和农村人口对环境问题的感知的影响。我们结合了互补的植被指数（NDVI 和 EVI）来研究长期的土地利用变化和基于像素的物候统计趋势。我们通过水分析并结合综合水质指数的计算，评估农村家庭暴露于地下水污染风险的程度。之后，我们将调查结果与对来自 7 个村庄的 401 户代表性样本的社会调查结果进行对比。我们发现，在过去 35 年中，沿海线性城市化迅速发展，建筑用地增加了 12 倍，这损害了自然空间，上游农村地区缺乏设备和手段。我们表明，最差的水质与人类活动对可立即到达的水点的负面影响有关。我们观察到，农村家庭意识到环境问题的存在和严重性，但由于教育水平低，他们感到困惑，这导致他们理解因果关系的能力较弱。我们预计迫切需要改善人口的福祉和教育水平，并协同修正管理计划，将流域作为一个综合系统进行管理。从广义上讲，利益相关者应该恢复失去的领土和谐，并根据可持续的环境-社会经济愿景重新分配土地利用。
