Assessment of the impact of human activities on natural diversity in the Egyptian western Mediterranean tourist coasts: A case study using dune- habitats’ restricted species

Abstract

The Egyptian coastal dunes have endured dramatic changes during the past decade due to tourism and urbanization. Here we focused on dune-restricted habitat species that can serve as indicators providing conservation status of the Mediterranean coastal ecosystem. We identified 13 urban or non-urban habitats; classification of plots was carried out using the percentage cover through agglomerative hierarchical clustering. Therophytes were the most represented life form (51 %), followed by chamaephytes and hemicryptophytes (18 and 14 %, respectively). Our findings utilized diversity indices between urban and non-urban locations; the urban locations had relatively greater values than the non-urban with values ∼ 0.63 and ∼ 0.12 (nepers/indiv.) for urban sites and sand formation as the non-urban locations, respectively. The values of the Natural diversity index (N index) of species at both urban and non-urban locations generally display a high degree of naturalness. Our results are a key finding for conservation monitoring and preventing habitat loss or even extinction.