Algeria
Terrain
Landscape in Saharan area of Tassil-n-Ajjer contains needle-like
rocks ane petrified sand in shapes of castles and cathedrals.
Courtesy LaVerle Berry
Clearing of land for agricultural use and cutting of timber over
the centuries have severely reduced the once bountiful forest
wealth. Forest fires have also taken their toll. In the higher
and wetter portions of the Tell Atlas, cork oak and Aleppo pine
grow in thick soils. At lower levels on thinner soils, drought-resistant
shrubs predominate. The grapevine is indigenous to the coastal
lowlands, and grasses and scrub cover the High Plateaus. On the
Saharan Atlas, little survives of the once extensive forests of
Atlas cedar that have been exploited for fuel and timber since
antiquity.
The forest reserves in Algeria were severely reduced during the
colonial period. In 1967 it was calculated that the country's
forested area extended over no more than 2.4 million hectares
of terrain, of which 1.8 million hectares were overgrown with
brushwood and scrub. By contrast, woodlands in 1830 had covered
4 million hectares. In the mid-1970s, however, the government
embarked on a vast reforestation program to help control erosion,
which was estimated to affect 100,000 cubic meters of arable land
annually. Among projects was one to create a barrage vert
(green barrier) more or less following the ridge line of the Saharan
Atlas and extending from Morocco to the Tunisian frontier in a
zone 1,500 kilometers long and up to twenty kilometers wide.
The barrage vert consists principally of Aleppo pine,
a species that can thrive in areas of scanty rainfall. It is designed
to restore a damaged ecological balance and to halt the northern
encroachment of the Sahara. By the early 1980s, the desert had
already penetrated the hilly gap between the Saharan Atlas and
the Aurès Mountains as far as the town of Bou Saâda, a point well
within the High Plateaus region. The barrage vert project
was ended in the late 1980s because of lack of funds.
Data as of December 1993
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