Land use and land cover changes in Morocco: trends, research gaps, and perspectives

Over the last two decades, an increased number of studies have been conducted to assess land use and land cover changes (LULCC) across the world using various techniques of remote sensing and GIS. Here, we critically reviewed the available literature assessing the spatiotemporal dynamics of LULC in Morocco to emphasize the advances and identify the gaps. Sixty-six peer-reviewed papers, published until August 2023, were selected and analysed. The most interesting findings are: (i) a growing tendency in the number of publications that are mostly concentrated in the northern part of Morocco (i.e., Occidental Meseta and Rif) and less frequent in the Saharan part and Oriental Meseta, (ii) remote sensing (mainly Landsat imagery) and ArcGIS are the top data sources and software used in image processing, respectively, (iii) agricultural land, built-up, and bare soil are the main studied LULC classes that are showing an increasing trend at the expense of forest and vegetated areas that are showing an inverse trend, (iv) population growth and related activities (mainly agriculture expansion and urbanization), conjugated to the warming climate trend, are the main drivers of LULCC. Future studies should extend beyond a simple description towards a deeper understanding of LULCC impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem services, and population well-being under global changes, considering socioeconomic, ecological, biophysical, and cultural characteristics in interpreting LULCC. Our pioneer synthesis would have a double importance: helps decision-makers in defining priorities for management and environmental policy change, and sheds light on the gaps that still remain an open research topic.