Shifting Cultivation: Cropping Patterns, Jhum Cycle and Problems If the survey provided information about when (i.e. - Madagascar: Shifting cultivation is expected to remain widespread, especially along the eastern escarpment, until well beyond 2030. Road Building The Transamazon Highway has allowed increased access to the Amazon Rainforest. Our predictions of future extents of shifting cultivation are, of course, speculative. We attribute it to 2010 for the sake of simplicity. 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]. In addition, we used available very highresolution satellite imagery from Bing and Google (most images dating from the period between 2008 and 2015; visited between September and April 2015) in an ArcGIS Desktop 10.4 and QGIS environment to examine visually whether a given area for which the GFC data indicated a spatio-temporal pattern of small-scale clearings consistent with shifting cultivation, was indeed likely to be under shifting cultivation. northern Zambia and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo), parts of southeastern Africa (e.g. in parts of Southeast Asia). We have nonetheless ventured to display our estimates in predictive maps because they are based on a spatially explicit analysis in 2010. The area calculation was done within a Mollweide projection. Mining An increased demand for minerals is also driving the mining industry to destroy forests. Agriculture and Its Impact on LandUse, Environment, and Ecosystem Consequently, if further research (e.g. Two steps enabled us to gain insights into larger recent (last 40 to 50 years) trends in the development of the global area under shifting cultivation. The Data behind Deforestation Causes of Deforestation Effects | Facts - Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet However, this future may also provide better opportunities for production and income generation if development efforts are sensitive to the needs of shifting cultivators [73,74]. This trend, which was also identified by van Vliet et al. Lastly, it is also problematic that shifting cultivation has been subject to recycling of statements about its importance that have no basis in thorough empirical research. There was a bias towards responses from researchers who worked in Southeast Asia (see Fig 3); but this is also the world region where most research on shifting cultivation has been done, whereas Africa has the fewest studies and is clearly under-represented in light of the considerable occurrence of shifting cultivation there [17,44]. Our review of the more recent literature revealed surprisingly few studies containing regional or global estimates of areas under shifting cultivation. Recent international efforts to compare and synthesize different earth system models have come with a strong focus on quantifying the past, current, and future contributions of land use to climate change [14]. Second, we combined the results of this comparison with those of our expert survey. IWGIA - IWGIA - International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs [1]. Data curation, This figure was elaborated by the first author using ArcGIS 10.4. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.g003. No, Is the Subject Area "South America" applicable to this article? Shifting cultivation: more than a means of livelihood 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. The history of shifting cultivation is as old as the history of agriculture itself. Methodology, The climate of most European countries is wet By contrast, we expect that shifting cultivation will persist for a longer time in Africa, especially in Central Africa. Peninsular Malaysia, central and southern Thailand) [28]. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.t002. Extreme weather events like wildfires (which are responsible for an estimated 10% of degradation annually), droughts, and storm surges destroy millions of hectares of forest every year and their intensity is only increasing with global warming. To assess published scientific material on the current extent of shifting cultivation, we searched the Web of Science (All Databases) using the following search string: [Title]: "shifting cultivation" or swidden* or "slash and burn" or "slash-and-burn" or "shifting agriculture" AND [Year published]: 20052016. Although the areas shown on the map also include non-shifting forms of subsistence agriculture, it is reasonable to assume that shifting cultivation predominated in the humid and sub-humid tropics, which are the main focus of the present study. We then made an estimate of trends in occurrence of shifting cultivation for these aggregated regions for 2030, 2060 and 2090 also taking into account the historical trends between the Butler map and our 2010 classification. These Farmers Slash and Burn ForestsBut in a Good Way Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free. 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. Meanwhile, the area under shifting cultivation has decreased by 71.22% from 1997 and forest cover has decreased by 4.41% during the period. Besides the need to determine the effects of shifting cultivation on land usebased greenhouse gas emission scenarios, there are other important reasons for gaining a better understanding of change in shifting cultivation systems. However, we found that its occurrence in most one-degree cells, where it existed, was fairly limited, with roughly 85% of these cells showing occurrence levels below 20% (currently cultivated fields and all stages of fallows). SCIplanet - Shifting Cultivation PDF research article International Journal of Commerce and Business What Is Intensive Agriculture? - Sentient Media The system is destabilized by long cultivation and short fallow periods. Writing review & editing, Affiliations Shifting cultivation - Wikipedia of Energy, grant number DE-SC0012972, and the Global Land Project Grant from the University of Copenhagen. Mozambique), northern mainland Southeast Asia (northern Laos and Myanmar), Borneo, and, to a lesser degree, Central America, Colombia, and Peru. shifting agriculture, system of cultivation that preserves soil fertility by plot (field) rotation, as distinct from crop rotation. Logging Such areas are found in parts of Southeast Asia (e.g. No, Is the Subject Area "Asia" applicable to this article? https://www.britannica.com/topic/shifting-agriculture. If and when the occurrence of shifting cultivation in a grid cell fell below 5% (mean value for very low), shifting cultivation was assumed to disappear in that grid cell. [1] indicate 110 Mha for this region, but unlike FAO they did not include Mexico in their estimation. Is the Subject Area "Land use" applicable to this article? The very low occurrence of shifting cultivation within a majority of cells, particularly in the Americas, points towards shifting cultivation being either a form of cultivation practiced in landscapes where only a minor share of the land is used for agriculture (e.g. However, adequate prediction of land usebased emissions requires an improved understanding of megatrends in land use systems change [2,5]. While our estimates are based on non-automated methods and expert information from different parts of the world, we argue that our work nonetheless advances the state of knowledge considerably, especially with regard to earth system modeling scenarios, which have proved sensitive to the inclusion of shifting cultivation and up to now have used shifting cultivation data based on a hand drawn map from the 1980s. Fig 5 presents the results of our own visual approximation of the global extent of shifting cultivation around 2010 at a one-degree resolution, based on Hansen et al.s (2013) GFC data and very highresolution satellite imagery. The analysis presented is primarily qualitative with a supplementary quantitative analysis of the causes of forest . Shifting Cultivation - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics As for the entire global level assessment of all the 2,817 one degree cells considered, the GEFC and available very high resolution imagery (i.e. Formal analysis, Climate change has caused increased heat, drought, and insect outbreaks. - Central Africa: Shifting cultivation is estimated to persist well into the 2060s or longer due to the vast reserve of remote forested areas. The aforementioned map produced by Butler [13] (Fig 4) is a hand-drawn representation of areas where both shifting and non-shifting primitive subsistence agriculture exists, as Butler put it. Cultivation of the earth after clearing is usually accomplished by hoe or digging stick and not by plow. The author has visited the entire Mizoram state and observed that shifting cultivation has a severe adverse impact on the environment, forest depletion and landscape degradation. Based on this we expect that shifting cultivation is likely to decrease significantly in all regions over the next 20 years, and we estimate that it will tend towards disappearance in all regions by 2090 (Table 3). The global food system is in crisis. Supervision, This figure was elaborated by the first author using ArcGIS 10.4. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.g005. At the regional scale, an assessment by Spencer [45] provides a slightly more differentiated picture of the presence of shifting cultivation practices in Asia. The effects on seasons of a changing climate are already being seen across the country and vary region to region: temperatures have risen across seasons, growing seasons have become longer, precipitation patterns have changed, and extreme precipitation events have increased in frequency and severity. In order to assess both past and future land use transitions in areas currently under shifting cultivation, we identified experts with recent knowledge of these areas by searching the Web of Science (All Databases) for papers published between 2005 and 2015 whose title contained shifting cultivation or similar terms. 2030, 2060, 2090) shifting cultivation was expected to disappear completely from a specific country (n = 21), all one-degree cells having their centroid within that country where classified as having zero occurrence of shifting cultivation after that time, regardless of the above-described gradual decrease. here. Deforestation in the tropical rainforest - Internet Geography Predicting future trends in the development of any form of land use requires extreme caution [23,69]. Methodology, Bing and Google Earth) were used. [52]; the latter source, however, does not provide this information, so the 1,000 Mha claim seems to be unfounded. Based on an expert survey, we make a first attempt at estimating past trends as well as possible future trends in the global distribution of shifting cultivation until the end of the 21st century. The most important questions included: The information provided by the respondents related to very different spatial scales, ranging from village to district, provincial, and, in some cases, national scales. Eutrophication is the process in which a water body becomes overly enriched with nutrients, leading to plentiful growth of simple plant life. The major disadvantage of Shifting Cultivation is that many trees in the forest are cut and this increases soil infertility and leads to soil . What is shifting cultivation? What are its disadvantages? - Vedantu Our main objectives in this study are therefore 1) to review published knowledge about current status and past trends in the development of the global extent of shifting cultivation; 2) to assess the recent global distribution of shifting cultivation and, based on these trends and expert statements, 3) to provide a first estimation of the future extent and spatial distribution of shifting cultivation until 2090. For example, the large areas of tree plantations established in Vietnam and southern China in the 1980s and 1990s can also leave a mosaic signature at a certain point in time and might therefore be incorrectly interpreted as shifting cultivation (Fig 1). The colored pixels indicate clearings in different years between 2000 and 2014 as recorded in the GFC data set [8]. Shifting cultivation is the major occupation and the main source of income of the marginal farmers ( Jhumias) in Mizoram. The authors estimated that these areas made up 13.1% of the countrys total land area in 2010; assuming the Democratic Republic of the Congo has a land area of 2.27 million km2 [59], this would amount to nearly 30 Mha, compared to 16 Mha based on the global GLC2000 data set in Silva et al. Writing original draft, Roles For each grid cell, the occurrence of shifting cultivation declined linearly by the mid-point of the estimated losses in 2030, 2060 and 2090 (see Section 3.4). We used a search string similar to the one used for the literature review: [Title]: "Shifting cultivation" or swidden or "slash-and-burn" or "slash and burn" or "shifting agriculture" AND [Year published]: 20052015. Disadvantages of Shifting cultivation: Deforestation Loss of fertility of a specific site Soil erosion Tree burning generates air pollution. here. Areas drenched by irrigation can become waterlogged, creating soil conditions that poison plant roots through anaerobic decomposition. While shifting cultivations signature on the landscape may be captured as a mixture or mosaic of agriculture and forest land cover classes, this alone does not suffice to indicate with certainty the presence of shifting cultivation. Furthermore we wish to express our gratitude to the two reviewers as well as the editor for the very useful comments and inputs. From this, we excluded regions where shifting cultivation can safely be assumed to not have been present for centuries (e.g. Methodology, 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. In West and Central Africa, shifting cultivation is largely continuing and has even been expanding in certain areas. Both conditions apply to considerable parts of Central Africa. But developing predictions is essential to estimating future land usebased greenhouse gas emissions, and we consider that our approach will help to improve existing projections, which essentially assume the area under shifting cultivation to remain constant in the future [2]. The downed vegetation, or "slash", is then left to dry, usually right before the rainiest part of the year.Then, the biomass is burned, resulting in a nutrient-rich . India, Bangladesh), comparison of the maps (Fig 6) and the survey responses point to similar trends. Shifting cultivation systems are ecologically viable as long as there is enough land for long (10-20 years) restorative fallow, and expectations of crop yield and the attendant standards of living are not too high. - India and Bangladesh: Shifting cultivation is estimated to disappear by 2030. Why poison ivy is an unlikely climate change winner. For large parts of insular Southeast Asia and South Asia (e.g. The global shift towards this model of farming in the last sixty years has come with many costs. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.g006. For India, Goswami et al. For Central and South America, the survey shows a mixed picture, with some areas being quite stable or even likely to experience expansion in the near future, and other areas (e.g. Environment; Why poison ivy is an unlikely climate change winner. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Yes Improvements in mapping the extent of shifting cultivation and trends in its development may be expected in the near future. It upsets the ecological balance as it disturbs many eco-systems of that region due to destruction of natural vegetation. On the other hand, large areas with shifting cultivation in Central Africa, for example in the Democratic Republic of the Congo [36], are strongly under-represented in Silva et al. After being used to grow a variety of crops for a year or two, the area is allowed to lie fallow for a period of rejuvenation, while the farmer moves on to a . Climate change impacts on food production - The Ecologist For this reason, the known widespread decrease in the occurrence of shifting cultivation in Southeast Asia (e.g. In Mexico, however, the trend has been towards decreasing areas under shifting cultivation. Yes All answers were anonymous and cannot be traced back to the individual expert. Shifting agriculture | agriculture | Britannica In this specific case 1088 or 10.88% of the 1/100 degree cells within the one-degree sample cell were detected as having shifting cultivation in the validation data sets. But information about such landscapes is urgently needed to improve the outcomes of global earth system modelling and large-scale carbon and greenhouse gas accounting. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.g004. As for Africa, we found only one recent national study, on the Democratic Republic of the Congo [36]. Generally, the two approximations of areas under shifting cultivation are in fairly good agreement, especially when considering that the large differences in the arid areas of northern Africa, southern Angola, and Zambia and the high-mountain areas of eastern Bolivia are largely explained by the fact that Butler included other, non-shifting forms of extensive smallholder agriculture and that shifting cultivation in these areas based on the climatic condition never could have been widespread. Our cautious estimation indicates that the global extent of shifting cultivation, including currently cultivated fields and all stages of fallows, may amount to roughly 280 Mha, with the largest share in Africa, followed by the Americas and Asia. However, more severe warming, floods, and drought may reduce yields. [3037]) such approaches cannot yet be up-scaled to global level due to data availability as well as computational limitations. It is a serious environmental concern since it can result in the loss of biodiversity, damage to natural habitats, disturbances in the water cycle, and soil erosion. Nearly two-thirds of its population depends directly on agriculture for its livelihood. Revitalizing the practice of shifting cultivation: A - IFAD the effect of shifting cultivation and what actually is shifting [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. What is the Relationship Between Deforestation And Climate Change? In soil-based agriculture, soil health is the most important foundation of a healthy farm ecosystem. 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. To get a first estimation of the occurrence of shifting cultivation, we classified each cell under investigation into one of five shifting-cultivation occurrence classes: none, very low, low, moderate, or high. Shifting Cultivation Shifting Cultivation Agricultural Geography Agricultural Hearths Agricultural Production Regions Agricultural Revolutions Agriculture and Climate Agriculture and Pollution Agrochemicals Community Supported Agriculture Extensive Farming Feeding the World Food Desert Food Insecurity Food Movements Green Revolution The number of estimates of areas under shifting cultivation at regional and national scales in the literature is also very limited. For this reason, we have estimated future changes in shifting cultivation by combining observed trends between the Butler map and our own map with experts survey responses regarding future changes in shifting cultivation in different parts of the world. The main outcomes presented in this study are maps showing the estimated presence of shifting cultivation at a one-degree resolution for the present, as well as, for the first time, estimations for 2030, 2060, and 2090. Each of the 328 sample one-degree cells was subdivided in cells of 1/100 degree by 1/100 degree, resulting in 10,000 verification cells per one-degree cell. PDF Cultivation and soil structure - Department of Primary Industries For example, many of the commercial or smallholder oil palm and rubber plantations that cover large areas of Southeast Asia today are on land that was formerly used for shifting cultivation [1821]. Researchers are currently developing automated approaches that are capable of processing decades of Landsat data and detecting the spatio-temporal patterns of shifting cultivation. [17] showed that these regions have experienced marked decreases in shifting cultivation. Describes the cultivation systems employed and the problems generated erosion, burning, harm to indigenous plants and animals. Concludes by addressing the need to protect and conserve the natural forests and wild life. archeological studies or historical studies of shifting cultivation in Europe), duplicates, and papers whose authors had deceased in the meantime, 282 papers remained. Writing original draft, 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. The difference between the Butler mapwhich is presumably based on studies dating from the 1960s and 1970s [13]and our own current investigation around 2010 is displayed in Fig 6. Based on our expert survey and historical trends we estimate a possible strong decrease in shifting cultivation over the next decades, raising issues of livelihood security and resilience among people currently depending on shifting cultivation. On the basis of archaeological evidences and radio-carbon dating, the origin of shifting cultivation could be traced back to about 8000 BC in the Neolithic period which witnessed the remarkable and revolutionary change in man's mode of production of food as from hunter and gatherer he became food producer. within global land-use models) needs spatially explicit estimates of areas under shifting cultivation at intervals lying between the status shown in the Butler map (1960s to 1970s) and our estimations for 2010 (e.g. Eutrophication is considered to be a serious environmental concern since it often results in the . First, an area of fallow forest is cleared for cultivation. Conceptualization, Writing review & editing. Given that biomass regrows very quickly in the humid tropics, the GFC data set treats large shares of a field cleared for shifting cultivation and kept fallow for a relatively short period as deforestation. PLOS ONE promises fair, rigorous peer review, In addition to searching the Web of Science, we also consulted three major book publications that could be assumed to contain relevant information [2426]. Fig 1B to Fig 1E show examples of different zoom levels used to decide whether the pattern in the GFC data is indeed related to shifting cultivation Fig 1E (showing pattern of clearing for the current year of cultivation and different stages of fallow) or not Fig 1D (larger scale clearings with young rubber). Myanmar [6365]), Central America (e.g. Validation, Simran IAS Academy on Instagram: "#Learnbymaps is here to explain you Omissions? When looking at this comparison, it is important to keep in mind that only full disappearance of shifting cultivation within a one-degree cell will show as a change between the two data sets; gradual decreaseswhich normally precede full disappearanceare not captured if the occurrence of shifting cultivation in the respective cells according to our present estimate remains greater than 5%. The spatio-temporal pattern of the annual deforestation data from 2000 to 2014 at a resolution of 30 meters provides the basis for our approximation. Most plants and animals live in areas with very specific climate conditions, such as temperature and rainfall patterns, that enable them to thrive. Laos, Vietnam) over the past 15 to 25 years is not reflected in this comparison. In shifting cultivation method of agriculture an area of land is cleared off its vegetation and cultivated for a period of time and then abandoned. The validation of shifting cultivation mapping is generally challenging due to the lack of reference data [41,42]. - Shifting cultivation also destroys the habitat of wild animals at large. [68]). Benefits of sustainable agriculture for the environment and our wellbeing. The red hatching in (B) indicates the 1/100 degree cells that were classified as having shifting cultivation. Writing review & editing, Affiliation 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.