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Farmers using khettaras, which are underground galleries draining the water table and providing a collective access to groundwater, are faced with a dilemma. The khettaras are drying up under the combined effect of groundwater pumping for drinking water and irrigation of recently installed farms, and the reduced recharge of the aquifer. Since their khettaras were threatened, some collectives chose to install wells or boreholes to supply pumped water to these khettaras. This increases the discharge and saves their collective access to groundwater, while at the same time it contributes to a further drop in the water table. In this paper, we discuss this Cornelian choice of oasis communities in southern Morocco. Field observations, satellite image analysis and surveys with farmers made possible to understand the emergence of an irrigation system combining the khettara with solar pumping, to analyze its technical design, and to highlight the capacity of collectives to intervene on the management rules to adapt the technical and institutional system of the khettaras to new conditions. This article contributes to a reflection on the sustainability of access to groundwater in this pre-Saharan context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The embassy report of the Moroccan Idrîss al-Ğu‘aydî in France, Belgium, England and Italy during the summer of 1876, Ithâf al-‘akhyâr (Of the curiosities of Europe which amaze honest people) is important in several respects. After its recent translated into French, this paper tries to raise at least three points within it: first, its international political context and i internal motives; then, the impact of the industrial revolution upon the members of the embassy, as seen through the precious testimony of the narrator; and finally the means both linguistic and iconic used by the author to translate from the European mirror to the Moroccan reader the image of a modernity so far unimaginable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a long time, Man has been looking for the exploitation of natural resources for daily purposes. Thus, the current scientific and technological development has facilitated and given him real opportunities for the overexploitation of these resources in general and the plant cover in particular. In order to show this exploitation, we want, in this article, to study the evolution of the vegetation cover of the forest of Ait Daoud or Ali, located in the Central High Atlas on an area of 30 860 ha, between 1972, 1999 and 2020, based on remote sensing and GIS tool. Regarding the methodology of work, the multi-chronic study of the dynamics of the vegetation cover of the study area, is based on the spatio-temporal analysis and processing of satellite images by remote sensing space. Indeed, in this paper we have opted for this approach which is based on the use of data from LandSat satellite images of three types; these are the images of type MSS, ETM and Oli, for three dates 1972, 1999 and 2020 (period of 48 years) to identify the spatial differences of the vegetation cover between the three selected dates. Indeed, the study of the dynamics of the vegetation cover of the forest of Ait Daoud or Ali between 1972, 1999 and 2020, showed a very important spatio- temporal variation, linked essentially to several factors (natural and human). The comparison of the results of the classification of Landsat images, showed a decline and a significant degradation of vegetation cover between 1972 and 1999 of 12% of the total area of the study area. This degradation is justified by the intervention of several factors, including climatic conditions and dry periods that Morocco has experienced in this period. For the second period (1999-2020), the treatment showed an increase in vegetation cover of about 10%. In this study, we have highlighted the impact of natural factors and especially anthropic actions on the dynamics of the forest of Ait Daoud or Ali located in the Central High Atlas, based on the use of geospatial techniques that have allowed us to have very precise information on the spatio- temporal dynamics of plant cover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the outbreak of the Hirak in 2016, land issues have emerged as a new framework for social mobilization, and this goes far beyond the city of Al Hoceima, the starting point of the Hirak. The land issue, in connection with the territory, is posed with acuteness in the territories of cannabis production, whether in Tlata de Ketama or in the commune of Raya Suahal. Thus, activists blocked the departure of a military helicopter in 2017 as a sign of protest against the annexation of agricultural lands used by cultivators of cannabis. With the legalization of cannabis, the land issue arises as a condition for legal production of therapeutic and industrial cannabis. This paper seeks to explore the triangular relationship between cannabis, territory and land in the central Rif: it analyzes the aspects of this triangulation which engage the success of the legalization of cannabis for both therapeutic and industrial purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the ethnographic observation of three singular spaces in northern Morocco – a morgue, a “forest” and a presbytery – the paper explores the interconnections between migration experience and border violence from the perspective of migrants themselves. It demonstrates that migrants face at least three forms of border violence, emerging all at once from state control, networks of irregular migration, and humanitarianism. However, rather than being articulated in a cumulative relationship, these different forms of violence converge and reinforce each other within a continuum which permeates the migration trajectory. Migrants, for their part, are not mere objects of this continuum. Not only do they define practices to counter its effects – even if it means generating violence against their peers – but they also reinterpret the experience of violence in moral narratives that value risks in migration, while not naturalizing their exposure to death at the border. Migrants are thus actors in their own right of the “manufacture” of both the border and its composing violence, whether they oppose, or appropriate its effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica) is an emblematic species of Morocco, classified by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in the red list of endangered species. Determining its potential area under current climatic conditions is an essential step in planning and ensuring its conservation. In this paper, we applied the maximum-entropy algorithm (MaxEnt) to predict the current and potential distribution of the Atlas cedar in order to provide a basis for its conservation. The adjusted model had an excellent predictive quality (AUC = 0.967). The most significant variables influencing the distribution of Atlas cedar, under current climatic conditions, are the precipitation in the driest quarter, precipitation in the driest month, average annual temperature and relative humidity. The model developed made it possible to establish the first map of the suitable potential area of the Atlas cedar in Morocco. The results obtained will guide managers to identify favorable sites for the rehabilitation of the Atlas cedar threatened with extinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]