Contribution à l'histoire récente de la végétation du Bas-Loukkos (province de Larache, Maroc)

• Main Author: Aziz Ballouche
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Physio-Géo 2013-06-01
• Series: Physio-Géo
• Subjects: landscape; Loukkos; Morocco; palynology; parkland; vegetation history
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/physio-geo/3426

The study area is a geographical entity organized around the floodplain of the lower valley of the Loukkos wadi and the historic cities of Lixus and Larache. Owing to the double heritage value of this area, natural and historical, the reconstruction of the recent history of its vegetation and its landscapes is particularly relevant.Besides his former occupation in prehistory and antiquity, the area of Larache has played an important role in the Middle-Ages and modern times into the greater or lesser strained relations between Morocco and European Powers. In the history, the Loukkos valley has always been a route of penetration inside the country and its mouth a strategic site. The port of Larache was also the main export outlet for productions of Gharb and great cities of the hinterland as Basra or Fez (cork, grains, wool...), since the XVIth century.Based on a pollen diagram obtained in the adjacent valley of Sakh-Sokh wadi, we propose here to reconstruct the outline of recent vegetation history (since XIVth century), especially the wetlands of the floodplain and the cork oak forest, which constitutes the natural vegetation of the area. This information will then crossed with available historical sources for assessing the various factors of landscape dynamics identified since medieval times. The role of different waves of population and their kinds of exploitation and enhancement of the environment are examined.Degradation of the forest is old because it is on the territory of the cork oak forest that clearing activities took place, mainly for cereal cultivation and livestock. Other human activities such as logging, charcoal production, shipbuilding or fires there also contributed.Agro-silvo-pastoral Parklands are built at the same time. They are comparable to the dehesa and montado from the Iberian Peninsula. The history of these original landscapes is recognized for the first time in Morocco.