An ecological survey of standing waters in North West Africa: I. Rapid survey and classification

Abstract

In relation to the need for rapid assessment of the conservation valeu of wetlands and open waters around the Mediterranean, a rapid and simple survey technique covering a broad range of taxa is described. This method was employed in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco and the possibility of using the data to construct a classification of North African standing waters investigated. It was divided into four data sets—physical, macrophytes, invertebrates and winter counts of waterfowl—and cluster analyses were carried out on these. An analysis of the levels of relationship between all sites, obtained from the different cluster analyses, was then carried out to combine the results and to construct natural classes. The existence of these classes was confirmed by ordination analyses.