وعي الزراع بأثر بعض الممارسات البيئية على التنوع الحيوي ببعض قرى منطقة المعمورة الزراعية بمحافظة الإسكندرية

Abstract EN

This study aimed to identify the farmers' awareness level of some environmental practices impacts on the biodiversity in some villages of agricultural Maamoura region in Alexandria Governorate, to identify some of the respondents characteristics, to determine the changes on the biodiversity in their study environment, to identify correlation and regression relationships between the studied independent variables and the dependent variable, and to identify the most important obstacles that facing the respondents to maintain the biodiversity in their environment.

The random sample involved 260 respondents, representing 32.8% of the total number of population.

Data were collected using a questionnaire by personal interviews.

Descriptive methods, Pearson's correlation coefficients, and regression analysis used as statistical techniques.

The most important results of this study revealed that the majority of the respondents (80.8%) had a low and medium awareness level of some environmental practices impacts on the biodiversity.

The results showed that the environmental practices which had a lowest level of the respondents' awareness was in: 78.1% of the respondents has no awareness towards “drying the manure next to the home is actually polluting the environment", and 73.8% of the respondents has no awareness towards "intercropping is very useful for the soil" and "the untrusted manure may be so harmful because of its effects in spreading out the weed seeds and pathogens”.

The majority of the respondents confirmed that there are increases in the number of some harmful organisms which were as mentioned "flies, and mosquitoes", simultaneously, the respondents affirmed that recently there are apparent numerical shortage in some beneficial organisms.

Moreover, the results showed a positive correlation between age, educational level, social participation, farmland tenure, type of tenure, degree of commitment to purchase the certified seeds, quality life in the village, and the farmers' awareness level of some environmental practices impacts on the biodiversity.

Also, the results of regression indicate that the independent variables combined explained 67% of the variance in the farmers' awareness level of some environmental practices impacts on the biodiversity, based on the value of R 2 .

Furthermore, the most important obstacles which are facing the respondents and preventing them from saving the biodiversity in their environment was the agricultural labors are not available and unaffordable cost, followed by the lack of information on how to resist pests and exotic weeds in the environment.