Integrated process for Oasian ecosystem preservation

Abstract

Our case study will be BOUSAADA, it’s oasis is an undeniable resource; its strategic location at the Sahara’s entrance, encompassing both plains and desert climate gives it its character and makes it irreplaceable, the properties it gathers from its location makes for a unique and vital local ecosystem, in our context, such scarcity must be protected and maintained at all costs. Laws and government regulations have always been stringent on preventing crimes, injustice and corruption in society, but there doesn’t seem to be any concern, reflected in law that ensures that man does not harm his own environment (and that especially in our country of Algeria), this being a matter of a whole species survival, it is where this project’s intervention becomes vital in identifying and laying out such information, so that it’s importance becomes more visible. In our immediate context, the destruction or misuse of local natural resources can be very damaging in the long term, as everything happening within it is part of a one continuous cycle encompassing a multitude of processes that we are indeed a part of, and so in disrupting the equilibrium of a local ecosystem by forcing ourselves upon it in ways that harm the natural processes that occur, we endanger our own permanence in it. A simple yet vital example for this can be water, by polluting surface water through household waste, we participate in polluting what will eventually be a clean water supply, since surface water that takes the form of lakes, ponds or creeks eventually lead to aquifer recharge areas, which in turn lead to the aquifers, and thus by polluting surface water we have successfully polluted one of the most important sources of clean fresh water that we can use, represented in aquifers, and that is just one example. By contrast, this can be a good indicator for a project’s permanence within the space of the oasis, since we can judge objectively how ‘’good’’, or ‘’effective’’ our interventions are by directly studying the degree to which these interventions are positively integrated into local processes, if they do not disturb the ecosystem’s work, or better yet, if they manage to integrate it and be part of it, let alone enhance it, the work of this thesis will have been a success to a certain extent. As mentioned previously, the objective is to propose not only an intervention that ensures the conservation of the oasis space by making the most intolerant parts of it off-limits, but also by projecting interventions on the area itself, for projects that can potentially increase its attractiveness and thus help it receive more attention from localities and responsibilize them when it comes to preserving it, and in that way introduce those same people to the ecosystem. When we talk about conservation in this context, it is not just implied that the operation is about preserving a part of the city itself, but in broader terms, the work proposed is that of a new methodology (new in our country) for studying, overlaying and estimating value of land for future interventions, the method consists of ranking the importance of ALL FORMS of local natural resources, from most to least vital in terms of preservation, (these include natural resources that represent SOCIAL values), and thus allowing for projection that avoids the use of IRREPLACABLE land of vital importance, ensuring their added value to the city AND their protection.