Abstract
Freshwater ecosystems are among the most threatened worldwide. A great part of this threat comes from climate and land cover changes. This situation is specially worrying in areas and ecosystems that are highly relevant in terms of biodiversity but severely impacted by these two factors, such as water bodies in North Africa. Using water beetles as surrogates of freshwater biodiversity, we present a novel approach to identify priority basins for the preservation of freshwater biodiversity in Morocco, using Species Distribution Models to identify potential biodiversity hotspots under future climate change scenarios, and estimates of future Land Cover dynamics. The mountainous areas of the Rif and Prerif, Middle Atlas and northern Central Plateau areas, as well as some Atlantic coastal basins were identified as priority areas for water beetles conservation and will play a crucial role for the conservation of freshwater biodiversity. Indeed, these areas can act as a dead end for a number of African species in the future. However, most of these areas are poorly covered by the national protected areas network (i.e., protected area extent < 10%). In addition, our analyses revealed a general negative trend of the natural vegetation coverage in the study area, and an increase of non-irrigated cropland. Finally, we identified specific areas that need special attention because are priority for conservation but are expected to suffer intense land cover changes. These results, which consider not only biodiversity values, but also the potential threats driven by climate and land cover changes, can provide a solid scientific basis to policy-makers to define specific conservation measures to anticipate freshwater biodiversity loss in North Africa.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by an excellence grant (7UAE2020) from the National Center for Scientifc and Technical Research (CNRST), a grant for doctoral studies through the Erasmus + KA 107 Program (International Mobility for Credits, between Program Countries and Associated Countries) to A.B., and “project thématique” financed by Abdelmalek Essaâdi University. DS-F is funded by a postdoctoral contract from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Ramón y Cajal [RYC2019-027446-I] program. SP is funded by a postdoctoral contract from Junta de Andalucía-Fondo Social Europeo de Andalucía 2014–2020 (Spain) (SP-DOC_01211). We are also grateful to the Department of Water and Forests of Morocco for providing permissions for the surveys: Decisions 31/2007, 40/2018, 17/2019, 10/2020, 10/2021, 15/2022 and to Jorge M. Lobo for his advice on methodological (SDM) issues.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Abla Belhaj, Mario Mingarro, David Sánchez Fernández, Nard Bennas, Brahim Chergui, Susana Pallarés. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Abla Belhaj and all authors commented on subsequent versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Belhaj, A., Mingarro, M., Sánchez-Fernández, D. et al. Conservation of freshwater biodiversity in North Africa under future climate and land-cover changes. Biodivers Conserv 33, 1145–1163 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-024-02790-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-024-02790-4