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The consequences of global warming will aggravate the impacts of droughts. Future drought patterns are important for planning and policy formulation to mitigate the adverse effect of climate change. Consequently, this study aims at examining the projected the drought characteristics in seven meteorological stations in the Upper Draa Catchment (UDC) during the period from 1980 to 2016 using standardized precipitation index. The future climate scenarios were predicted by the model CNRM-ALADIN63 for three periods (2025–2049, 2050–2074, and 2075–2099). The changes were examined based on two Representative Concentration Pathways scenarios, namely: RCP4.5and RCP8.5. The findings indicated that increasingly extreme droughts are anticipated to occur during (2050-2074) followed by (2025-2049) than (2075-2099) under both scenarios. The results reveal a contrast in drought event frequency between historical data and projections with a noticeable variation of patterns of droughts characteristics across stations and time periods. This accentuates how urgent it is for the Upper Draa Catchment to implement proactive water resource management and adaptive strategies.

There is a belief that ambient air pollution is accountable for degrading the air quality indoors. Although in principle the indoor air quality should be better than that of outdoor air quality given the shielding effect of a house structure. However, ambient air quality can infiltrate and influence indoor air pollution concentrations in low-income urban informal settlements due to rudimentary designed household structures. Given this phenomenon, the current study endeavoured to explore the influence of outdoor exposure concentration on indoor air quality within the informal settlements of urban neighbourhoods. The exposure concentrations of indoor and outdoor particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide pollutants were simultaneously measured during summer and winter seasons. The GilAir Plus air sample pump was used to acquire measurements of particulate matter collected over 48 hours. While nitrogen dioxide gases were measured using passive diffusive samplers. All statistical analyses were performed using Python (version 3.8) Spyder. The current study has discovered that in many instances the results were comparable indoors and outdoors. For instance, this has been corroborated by the nitrogen dioxide discoveries where the current results were slightly comparable as indoor exposure concentrations values were recorded to be between (4 µg/m3 and 13 µg/m3), whilst the outdoor concentration ranged between (6 µg/m3 and 11 µg/m3). Likewise, a similar trend was observed for particulate matter exposure concentrations indoors (14 µg/m3) and (12 µg/m3) outdoors. The statistical inferences futher confirmed that the exposure values of indoor and outdoor were not significant (p>0.05) within the study areas of concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remote sensing (RS) data and geographic information system (GIS) techniques were used to monitor the changes in the Oasis agroecosystem of the pre-Saharan province of Errachidia, southeastern Morocco. The land use and land cover (LULC) change of the agroecosystem of this province was processed using Landsat time series with 5-year intervals of the last thirty years. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and the maximum likelihood classification (MLC) were categorized into five classes, including water bodies, cultivated land, bare land, built-up, and desertified land. The overall accuracy of the MLC maps was estimated to be higher than 90%. The finding showed a degradation trend represented by an increase in desertified lands, which tripled in the ten last years, passing from 20.62% in 2011 to 58.49% in 2022. The findings also depicted a decreasing trend in the cultivated area in this period passing from 174.2 km 2 in 1991 to 82.2 km 2 in 2022. Using NDWI, Landsat images from 1991 to 2021 depicted a strong association between the water reserve in Hassan Eddakhil dam in the upstream area and the LULC changes. The oases from the dam (upstream) to Er-Rissani (downstream) recorded high rates of decline with an increasing trend of desertification due to drought and overuse mainly of groundwater. The outputs of this research effort constitute a significant source of information that may be used to support further research and decision-makers to manage arid ecosystems and achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs), precisely the SDGs 15 (Life on land). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantifying variation in precipitation and drought in the context of a changing climate is important to assess climate-induced changes and propose feasible mitigation strategies, particularly in agrarian economies. This study investigates the main characteristics and historical drought trend for the period 1980–2016 using the Standard Precipitation Index (SPI), Standard Precipitation Evaporation Index (SPEI), Run Theory and Mann–Kendall Trend Test at seven stations across the Upper Draa Basin. The results indicate that rainfall has the largest magnitude over the M'semrir and Agouim (>218 mm/pa) and the lowest in the Agouilal, Mansour Eddahbi Dam, and Assaka subregions (104 mm–134 mm/pa). The annual rainfall exhibited high variability with a coefficient of variation between 35−57% and was positively related to altitude with a correlation coefficient of 0.86. However, no significant annual rainfall trend was detected for all stations. The drought analysis results showed severe drought in 1981–1984, 2000–2001, and 2013–2014, with 2001 being the driest year during the study period and over 75% of both SPEI and SPI values returned drought. Conversely, wet years were experienced in 1988–1990 and 2007–2010, with 1989 being the wettest year. The drought frequency was low (<19%) across all the timescales considered for both SPI and SPEI, with Mansour Eddahbi Dam and Assaka recording the highest frequencies for SPI-3 and SPEI-3, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study intentions to appraise the relative vulnerability of the trachoma disease in some provinces of the pre-Sahara of Morocco. In this region, numerous socio-ecological risk factors of this illness yield the appropriate conditions to its prevalence. A multivariate method is needed to estimate and compare the vulnerability to this disease in the endemic zones. To reach this objective, a composite indicator (the integrated trachoma vulnerability index) was conceived and applied in five provinces. This tool uses 28 standardized indicators classified into seven vulnerability components. To visualize the associations between variables, the principal component analysis was applied through the Clustvis tool. The outcomes reveal in relation to the terms of the anthropogenic vulnerability, Errachidia, Tinghir, Ouarzazate, and Zagora rank the higher score. Geographically and climatically, Tata scored a very high score. Otherwise, Tinghir, Zagora, Ouarzazate, and Errachidia recorded very high scores concerning socioeconomic component, while Tinghir and Zagora are the most vulnerable for the public services category. However, in terms of health aspects, Ouarzazate has a relatively very high vulnerability compared to the rest of the sites. Lastly, the hygiene component vulnerability shows a very high vulnerability in Errachidia followed by Ouarzazate. Overall, Errachidia, followed by Ouarzazate scored very high vulnerability, whereas, Zagora, Tata, and Tinghir ranked high vulnerability to the disease. The results depict also that all the studied sites are very highly exposed to the disease and Ouarzazate is at the top of this aspect. However, Zagora is the most susceptible, and Tinghir, Tata, and Zagora are relatively the most resilient. The proposed index may be considered as part of the National proactive plan to fight against the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]