Slash and Burn Agriculture Explanation - ThoughtCo This number certainly requires further validation before it can be claimed to be an adequate estimate of the global area under shifting cultivation. While the literature offers good representations of the major natural land covers and human land uses [68], mosaic landscapes with a dynamic mix of managed and natural land covers often fall through the cracks in global land cover and land use classifications, as these are unable to adequately capture such landscapes dynamic nature and complex spectral signatures [912]. We limited the search to the period from 2005 to 2016 partly because we were interested in the most recent data on the extent of shifting cultivation as a basis for generating a map showing the contemporary situation (around the year 2010); the other reason was that we expected many recent reports on areas under shifting cultivation to rely on previously published data, which would enable targeted backtracking through the literature all the way to the original sources. The recently launched Sentinel-2 instruments with their augmented repeat frequency will generally help to improve remote sensingbased analyses of the humid tropics, which are complicated by frequent and persistent cloud cover. However, the areas indicated for each country vary greatly depending on the source. A study conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in 1985 (based on 90 tropical countries reporting forest fallow areas within the FAO/UNEP Tropical Forest Resources Assessment Project 1982 [49]) estimated the worldwide extent of shifting cultivation in the early 1980s at 400 Mha [50], and an assessment made in 2011 with the aim of estimating greenhouse gas emissions arrived at 260 Mha for the 2000s [1]. However, it is important to underline that this assessment is based on very few survey responses (Fig 3) due to the small number of existing studies on shifting cultivation in Africa. As for Africa, we found only one recent national study, on the Democratic Republic of the Congo [36]. The search was performed in January 2016 and generated 324 articles, which we then screened for data on numbers or estimates of global or national areas influenced by shifting cultivation. Writing review & editing, Affiliation In shifting agriculture a plot of land is cleared and cultivated for a short period of time; then it is abandoned and allowed to revert to its natural vegetation while the cultivator moves on to another plot. No, Is the Subject Area "Earth systems" applicable to this article? [1] used the Global Land Cover 2000 (GLC2000) data set [53] and the Map of the Ecosystems for Central America [54] to estimate the extent of shifting cultivation at the global scale. No, Is the Subject Area "South America" applicable to this article? Moderate warming and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may help some plants to grow faster. Laos, Vietnam) over the past 15 to 25 years is not reflected in this comparison. By contrast, we expect that shifting cultivation will persist for a longer time in Africa, especially in Central Africa. Yes Shifting Cultivation at a Crossroads: Drivers and Outcomes of Recent Extreme precipitation events can disturb plant growth, particularly in recently burned forests, and make plants more vulnerable to flooding and soils to erosion. The results indicate that shifting cultivation is likely to persist longest in Africa. Writing original draft, No, Is the Subject Area "Deforestation" applicable to this article? Climate change impacts on food production - The Ecologist archeological studies or historical studies of shifting cultivation in Europe), duplicates, and papers whose authors had deceased in the meantime, 282 papers remained. If the survey provided information about when (i.e. - Myanmar: Shifting cultivation is estimated to mostly disappear sometime between 2060 and 2090 if conflicts between union government and ethnic armed groups are resolved. No source is reported for the map, but most likely it builds on a number of regional studies that was carried out between the 1940s and the 1970s, as well as general knowledge of where shifting cultivation and other extensive smallholder farming systems were found. Nevertheless, shifting agriculture is an adaptation to tropical soil conditions in regions where long-term, continued cultivation of the same field, without advanced techniques of soil conservation and the use of fertilizers, would be extremely detrimental to the fertility of the land. The area calculation was done within a Mollweide projection. Revitalizing the practice of shifting cultivation: A - IFAD [43] when using the same source material for the classification as for the reference or validation data, it is essential to create the reference/validation data with a more accurate process than the classification. The 270 first authors of these papers were listed and their email addresses were found. Fig 1 illustrates the procedure we used for this visual inspection. While an area approximation of actual shifting cultivation landscapes based on our analysis is difficult due to the estimated and not measured shared of shifting cultivation of each one-degree cell we believe that, given the high accuracy of this estimation (see Table 2), a conservative estimate can nonetheless be derived by visually inspecting the cells and allocating reasonable shares of shifting cultivation landscape (currently cultivated fields plus all stages of fallows) to them as described in the methods section. From this, we excluded regions where shifting cultivation can safely be assumed to not have been present for centuries (e.g. [1], possibly owing to the scale (1-km resolution) of the GLC2000 data sets. We estimate that shifting cultivation landscapes currently cover roughly 280 million hectares worldwide, including both cultivated fields and fallows. Plants, Animals, and Ecosystems | A Student's Guide to Global Climate Investigation, As global level ground data collection is not feasible and no global data on shifting cultivation for the considered time span of 2000 to 2014 is available, we generated a validation dataset, which contains a detailed delineation of the areas under shifting cultivation for a stratified sample of one-degree cells. Farmers will have to shift what they grow and how they grow it to keep up with an expanding population. Slash-and-burn agriculture is a farming method that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden.The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. Climate Impacts on Agriculture and Food Supply - US EPA here. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.g006. Livestock may be at risk, both directly from heat stress and indirectly from reduced quality of their food supply. Flooding, changing seasons and other weather changes impact the growing seasons of specific crops and could cause more and more damage to outdoor crops, driving some food production indoors and spiking prices at the same time. Updates? Initially, we considered all 6,704 one-degree cells covering the land area between 30S and 30N, where shifting cultivation is likely to occur [17]. The area approximation of actual shifting cultivation landscapes was performed based on the average occurrence rates in the one-degree cells for each of the five classes above (>1% class: 0%; 19%: 5%; 1019%: 15%; 2039%: 30%; 40%:70%). PLoS ONE 12(9): In Central America, shifting cultivation is still widespread, and both Fig 6 and the survey results indicate an increase in some areas (e.g. Silva et al. Unlike intensive agriculture, sustainable farming has a great potential for benefiting the environment and preserving natural resources. Industrialized agriculture is highly concentrated and mechanized, relying on chemical inputs like fertilizers, pesticides and non-therapeutic antibiotics. - Shifting cultivation also destroys the habitat of wild animals at large. The land takes many years to replenish just at the cost of providing yield for 2 to 3 years. We initiated occurrence at a one-degree resolution in 2010 (base year) at the mean of the above-stated ranges for each occurrence category in the assessment of current landscape with signs of shifting cultivation based on the GFC data (c.f. However, the occurrence of shifting cultivation within most of the individual one-degree cells is very low, meaning that it is a minor component of the overall landscape. In some specific areas, especially in Central Africa, it is likely to increase over the next decade before it begins to decline. Intensive agriculture has dominated the global food production . In eastern and southern Africa, shifting cultivation is still present, but not very common, with particularly low occurrences in Kenya and Tanzania. [17] showed that these regions have experienced marked decreases in shifting cultivation. Validation, In soil-based agriculture, soil health is the most important foundation of a healthy farm ecosystem. Cultivation was also a traditional form of weed control. 10 Sustainable Farming Methods and Practices | Greentumble Copyright: 2017 Heinimann et al. Environmental Impacts of Agricultural Modifications Shifting cultivation is the major occupation and the main source of income of the marginal farmers ( Jhumias) in Mizoram. Depletion of Nutrients The primitive style of framing like slash and burn decreases the organic matter from the soil. Each of these samples was visually examined in detail at scale of 1:20,000 or lower for the presence or absence of the above mentioned shifting cultivation specific spatio-temporal signs of clearing and regrowth on the landscape.