An ecological basis for sustainable land use of Eastern Mauritanian wetlands

The temporary wetlands of Eastern Mauritania in the Sahel region of Africa, are productive systems in an arid environment. Traditionally managed wetlands provide habitats for a wide range of plant and animal species and support local livelihoods through multiple land use. The heterogeneity and socio-economic importance of the wetlands is reflected in a cultural nomenclature, but the land use, environmental and biological basis of the nomenclature has not been studied. In this paper, the cultural typology is described from a structured field survey of site biophysical and land use attributes recorded in a regional site inventory. A numerical classification of inventory sites based on the plant species used for food and materials (resource species), showed that it was significantly associated with the cultural typology. Ordination of the sites showed that key underlying environment gradients significantly influencing resource species composition were water availability and land use intensity. Each cultural type occupied a unique location in ordination space corresponding to its hydrology and land use. A site ordination based on animal wildlife species composition showed that the duration of standing water was a key significant explanatory variable, with land use intensity of secondary importance. Analysis supports the view that traditional land use is based on understanding environment, plant growth and wildlife interactions and that this is the basis of sustainable management. Recent schemes to develop single-use agricultural systems by changing wetland shape and hydrology do not take cultural typology or traditional use systems into account. We propose that decisions on land use change at site and regional landscape scales would benefit from considering traditional management practices and that the cultural typology can be used as an indicator of site development potential.