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Plant Science Today (PST)

Research Articles

Vol. 12 No. 3 (2025)

Study and mapping of the impact of environmental changes on plant cover in Tazekka National Park

DOI
https://doi.org/10.14719/pst.7120
Submitted
7 January 2025
Published
30-06-2025 — Updated on 03-07-2025
Versions

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 20th century, Morocco has experienced an increase in its annual average temperature of around + 1.5 °C. This warming is observed throughout the Tazekka National Park (TNP) territory, which is our study's subject, located in the northernmost part of the Middle Atlas, near the city of Taza. This mountainous park covers an area of 13737 ha with an altitude between 1400 m and 1980 m (the summit of Tazekka). However, this massif, which offers a great variety in landscape and diversity of forest stands, is threatened due to anthropogenic and climatic factors. In this context, analyzes of Landsat images from 2010 to 2020 have enabled us to follow the evolution of natural plant formations in different stations of TNP. This work aims to highlight the spatio-temporal changes of plant groups in the park over 2010-2020, by studying the normalized vegetation index (NDVI). The obtained results in the form of GIS using the ArcGis software have shown that climate change strongly influences the plant biodiversity of the studied park.

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