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Forty years monitoring in an Algeria alfa steppe in southern Oran Region (Algeria) : plant diversity and composition changes. The loss of plant diversity as a degradation feature in arid steppic rangelands is one of the crucial concerns in the southern Mediterranean countries. These rangelands are facing two interacting driving forces : the arid climate with recurring and more or less lasting droughts on the one hand, and overgrazing on the other. Long-term monitoring of change in diversity and composition of plant communities is considered to be the best way to understand the history and mechanisms of ecosystem degradation and desertification. Starting from a pre-existing community in which alfa (Stipa tenacissima L.) was the dominant and the keystone species regarding ecosystem structure and functioning, forty years monitoring allowed analysing changes in floristic richness, diversity and community composition prior attaining its current state of degraded and impoverished steppe.
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Slimani et al. (2018) studied this question.
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