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Importance of Wetlands in Maintaining the Richness of Morocco’s Vascular Flora

  • Wetland Biodiversity
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Abstract

Morocco’s wetlands are renowned much more for their abundance and diversity than for their extent. The vascular flora of wetlands is not properly considered in national programs for the conservation and protection of biodiversity, although the first work concerning it dates back about half a century. This work highlights the overall richness of wetlands in terms of vascular plants. Indeed, around 36% of the Moroccan vascular flora exist in wetlands as specific (ST), facultative (FT) or opportunistic (OT) taxa. This taxonomic richness of wetlands, notable in North Atlantic Morocco and the Rif, depends more on local conditions than on bio-geographical zoning. The various factors that threaten this richness of vascular flora are emphasized in the context of disturbing wetland habitats and alarming global warming, i.e. unreliable database of local wetland biodiversity, inefficiency of development programs and actions that have been attempted, and non-comprehensive decision-making. It is particularly expected that Morocco’s commitment to the conservation of global biodiversity will lead to the development of a sustainable policy to conserve local wetlands.

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All data produced from this study are provided in this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. LMPCE Laboratory, Superior School of Technology, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fez, Morocco

    Abdeslam Ennabili

  2. LESCOBIO Laboratory, Faculty of Sciences, Abdelmalek Essaâdi University, Tetouan, Morocco

    Mohamed Libiad

  3. SNAMOPEQ Laboratory, Faculty of Sciences, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fez, Morocco

    Abdelmajid Khabbach

Authors
  1. Abdeslam Ennabili
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  2. Mohamed Libiad
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  3. Abdelmajid Khabbach
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Contributions

AE designed the work and contributed to the data collection and processing. He mostly contributed to the writing of the article and was responsible for the capture and arrangement of the photos. ML and AK jointly contributed to the collection, processing of data and writing of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Abdeslam Ennabili.

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Unpublished field data were obtained as part of the doctoral thesis (Ennabili, 1999) and, much later, during professional visits to the “Biology and Health” Laboratory, Faculty of Sciences, AbdelmalekEssaâdi University, Tetouan.

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Ennabili, A., Libiad, M. & Khabbach, A. Importance of Wetlands in Maintaining the Richness of Morocco’s Vascular Flora. Wetlands 41, 121 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-021-01517-3

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