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. Environmental Impacts of Agricultural Modifications Writing review & editing, Affiliation 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%. First, we compared the Butler [13] map (Fig 4) with our own spatial estimate (Fig 5) of areas that were under shifting cultivation around 2010. 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. What is the Relationship Between Deforestation And Climate Change? Why poison ivy is an unlikely climate change winner. The area calculation was done within a Mollweide projection. The maps focus on the tropical parts of Central and South America, Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and the Southwest Pacific for two reasons: 1) These areas have the most biomass, causing land use transitions in these areas to have a particularly high impact on global carbon emissions; and 2) shifting cultivation is most widespread in these areas today [17]. One major effect of shifting cultivation is that it destroys valuable plants and animals in the area by going into new environment to clear the bushes and destroyed ecosystem for the sake of farming 3. Shifting cultivation: more than a means of livelihood 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. Panama, Guatemala) well into the 2000s. Mozambique), northern mainland Southeast Asia (northern Laos and Myanmar), Borneo, and, to a lesser degree, Central America, Colombia, and Peru. The global shift towards this model of farming in the last sixty years has come with many costs. After analyzing the spatially differentiated changes between the status in the 1960s to 1970s as shown in the Butler map and our data for 2010 (Fig 6), we combined them with data from our expert survey about changes in areas under shifting cultivation between 1970 to 2000 and 2000 to 2010 as well as with information from the literature. 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. Its authors detected changes in what they call the rural complex for the period from 2000 to 2010. Meanwhile, the area under shifting cultivation has decreased by 71.22% from 1997 and forest cover has decreased by 4.41% during the period. Shifting cultivation in general, is a system of farming in which fields are prepared by cutting down the natural vegetations. 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). Corrections? These Farmers Slash and Burn ForestsBut in a Good Way 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. Other Causes of Deforestation Forest Fires Fires are a natural part of the lifecycle of many forests, clearing the way for younger, smaller growth. Moderate warming and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may help some plants to grow faster. Writing review & editing, Affiliation Yucatan Peninsula [66], northern South America (e.g. 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. Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland, Roles The validation of shifting cultivation mapping is generally challenging due to the lack of reference data [41,42]. - Madagascar: Shifting cultivation is expected to remain widespread, especially along the eastern escarpment, until well beyond 2030. Articles with data at subnational scales were only considered if the subnational area studied constituted the main area of shifting cultivation in the given country (and thus a reasonable estimate of the national extent of shifting cultivation). - Shifting cultivation also destroys the habitat of wild animals at large. For large parts of Southeast Asia, the survey results point towards that the current swift decrease in shifting cultivation continues, and that a large share of the area under shifting cultivation will have disappeared by 2030, and the remaining pockets are likely to be almost entirely gone by 2060.Moreover, the survey results indicate trends for some specific Asian countries: Humid tropical Africa is probably the region for which developments are most difficult to predict due to limited data. Extreme weather. 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. Fig 1A shows a one-degree square of northern Laos. 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. Writing review & editing, Affiliation A plot of land is cleared by cutting the trees and burning them. Conceptualization, 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. (2017) A global view of shifting cultivation: Recent, current, and future extent. 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. 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. Writing review & editing, Affiliation Shifting cultivation, which is still prevalent in the uplands of eastern Bangladesh, contributes significantly to forest loss and is the main cause of land degradation. [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. [1]. This technique serves to clear the field and enrich the soil with nutrients from the ash. Writing original draft, 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. Describes the cultivation systems employed and the problems generated erosion, burning, harm to indigenous plants and animals. 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. This paper presents the causes and consequences of shifting cultivation and its potential land use alternatives. With these caveats in mind, we aggregated responses to the national scale and to three supranational regions: the tropical parts of 1) Central and South America, 2) Africa, and 3) Asia. Environmental Impacts of Food Production - Our World in Data (Fig 2B): Location of the one-degree cell of Fig 2C - 2E. Intensive agriculture has dominated the global food production . For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click 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. Furthermore we wish to express our gratitude to the two reviewers as well as the editor for the very useful comments and inputs. Soil Health is Affected by Industrial Agriculture - FoodPrint For large parts of insular Southeast Asia and South Asia (e.g. 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. This visualization is based on the estimation of landscapes showing signs of shifting cultivation around 2010 (Fig 5) as base year and estimated decreases of shifting cultivation (Table 3) based on the expert surveys and observed trend between the Butler map and our 2010. 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. 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. The respondents were asked to estimate the current spatial extent of shifting cultivation as well as past and future trends in the development of this extent in their area of interest. This study combines existing global Landsat-based deforestation data covering the years 2000 to 2014 with very high-resolution satellite imagery to visually detect the specific spatio-temporal pattern of shifting cultivation at a one-degree cell resolution worldwide. [52]; the latter source, however, does not provide this information, so the 1,000 Mha claim seems to be unfounded. 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. 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]. We did not perform any detailed spatial delineation of the actual area under shifting cultivation, as the goal of our study was to provide a global one degreegridded product. The present study is a first step towards a future in which we will know more about the global distribution of shifting cultivation; we hope it opens the door to quantifying shifting cultivations importance for local as well as the global socio-ecological systems. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.g004. Discover a faster, simpler path to publishing in a high-quality journal. This left us with 2,817 one-degree cells, which we then further investigated. The validation of the estimation of landscapes showing signs of shifting cultivation revealed that 95.1% of the one-degree cells showing signs of shifting cultivation in the validation data correspond to the results in our classification. 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. 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. Shifting Cultivation: Features, Extent and Environmental Impacts Causes and consequences of shifting cultivation and its - Springer It received 1 point in In the absence of further data to validate past estimations of the extent of shifting cultivation, the Butler map may be considered a reasonable representation of the global distribution of shifting cultivation from 1960 into the 1970s. Based on the spatio-temporal pattern of the GFC data (different colours denoted different year of clearings) and the patterns of clearing and regrowth in the very high resolution imagery (here Bing), a 1/100-degree cell is being classified as showing shifting cultivation or not. Overall, a decrease after 2030 and disappearance after 2060 is expected. - West Africa (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, Cte dIvoire, Ghana): Shifting cultivation is anticipated to diminish rapidly by 2030 and to largely disappear by 2060 if peace is upheld and there is no major return of Ebola; but if conflicts resurface, shifting cultivation may persist well into the second half of this century. Areas in which shifting cultivation can be assumed to have never existed or disappeared decades ago have been excluded from the analysis (dark gray). Our predictions of future extents of shifting cultivation are, of course, speculative. Spencer [45] indicates an approximate area under shifting cultivation (currently cultivated fields plus all stages of fallows) of around 110 million hectares (Mha) for Asia. 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 principle of cultivation is to turn the soil into a fine tilth to provide the ideal environment for seeds to germinate. Climate Impacts on Agriculture and Food Supply - US EPA Environment; What you can do right now to advocate for the planet. Environment; Why poison ivy is an unlikely climate change winner. The increase of shifting cultivation in Myanmar shown in Fig 6 is due to a marked underestimation in the Butler map, which can possibly be explained by the limited availability of information about Myanmar after the military government came to power in 1962. Hence, the occurrence level was estimated and not measured and the classification was based on a coarse assessment of the landscape (also see accuracy assessment below). Agriculture CBSE Class 10 SST Geography Extra Questions 2], while long cycles comprise fallow periods of more than 15 years (Villa et al., 2020; Villa et al., 2017 . This paper presents the causes and consequences of shifting cultivation and its potential land use alternatives. Bing and Google Earth) were used. Growing Seasons in a Changing Climate | USDA Climate Hubs https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.t002. Yes Plants, Animals, and Ecosystems. For example, data for Laos indicate between 2 and over 6 Mha, while more recent figures based on remote sensing (multi-temporal Landsat) for northern Laoswhere the largest share of shifting cultivation in the country is foundare 3.1 Mha [33] and 2.6 Mha [34]. [24]). To stress the interactions between society and the environment, the driving forces (D), pressures (P), states (S), impacts (I), and response (R) (DPSIR) framework approach . In addition to searching the Web of Science, we also consulted three major book publications that could be assumed to contain relevant information [2426]. The plot is left alone for longer than it was cultivated, sometimes up to 10 or more years, to allow wild vegetation to grow on the plot of land. [2] included shifting cultivation in a global harmonization of land use states and transitions from past to future: they found only one (hand-drawn) global map of shifting cultivation, in a book on economic geography dating from 1980 [13]. Based on existing data and knowledge, we have made a first attempt at estimating possible future trends in the distribution of shifting cultivation until 2090. We compared this result to Butlers (1980) binary (presence or absence) map of shifting cultivation, gridded into one-degree cells. Formal analysis, At present, net area sown in Mizoram State is only 5.5%, of which, 16.9% area is devoted to shifting cultivation. Maps created in QGIS 2.16. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.g002. No, PLOS is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation, #C2354500, based in San Francisco, California, US, Corrections, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479, ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/003/y1860e/y1860e00.pdf, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cg.html. Sustainable Agriculture vs. Industrial Agriculture - FoodPrint Nobody knows how many people today depend on shifting cultivation globally [22]. the effect of shifting cultivation and what actually is shifting The imagery used for illustrative purpose in Fig 1 is based on Copernicus Sentinel 2 data from 2016. The Neolithic Revolutionalso referred to as the Agricultural Revolutionis thought to have begun about 12,000 years ago. e. 1,063 likes, 4 comments - Simran IAS Academy (@simranias) on Instagram: "#Learnbymaps is here to explain you about #Slash and #Burn Cultivation Slash and burn #agricultu." Simran IAS Academy on Instagram: "#Learnbymaps is here to explain you about #Slash and #Burn Cultivation Slash and burn #agriculture is also called the shifting cultivation. How Does Agriculture Affect Deforestation? - Sentient Media However, the areas indicated for each country vary greatly depending on the source. Soil is the foundation of most types of agriculture. The remaining cells (3,887) were excluded from the analysis as shifting cultivation can be assumed to have never existed or disappeared decades ago (see Fig 5 and Method section). Large forest or vegetation areas are cleared and burned down for mining operations. Shifting Cultivation at a Crossroads: Drivers and Outcomes of Recent Methodology, d. It accounts for 26% of the gross domestic product. Shifting cultivation and deforestation: A study from Indonesia However, sustainable agriculture, which uses methods that protect the environment, public . Regarding Central and South America, the only available source [57] used the secondary forest class as defined in FAOs Forest Resource Assessment 1990 [58] as a proxy and stated the area under shifting cultivation to be 165 Mha. This has become more clear than ever in 2022, with war and weather extremes related to climate change wreaking havoc on farm animals, agricultural operations and food prices around the world. At the same time, shifting cultivation was one of the most sensitive variables in their model runs (along with wood harvesting). Shifting Cultivation: Definition & Examples | StudySmarter Funding: This research was supported by the Institute of Geography and the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), University of Bern, Switzerland, as well as the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d) supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), grant number 400440 152167, the U.S. Dept. Unlike intensive agriculture, sustainable farming has a great potential for benefiting the environment and preserving natural resources. 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). This trend, which was also identified by van Vliet et al. A review focusing on Southeast Asia found little aggregate information about the areas under shifting cultivation there [10], and we were unable to find information about shifting cultivation areas in Africa and Latin America. Causes and consequences of shifting cultivation and its alternative in Deforestation: Definition, Causes and Impacts - Embibe The search was performed in September 2015 and generated 316 results. Of the remaining 225 authors, 72 responded and 49 provided usable information (see S1 File). 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. Is the Subject Area "Land use" applicable to this article? 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. Using the data and approach described above, each one-degree cell was examined visually at various zoom levels (roughly 1:100000 but, if necessary, occasionally at larger scales) to determine whether it showed the very specific spatio-temporal signature of shifting cultivation (see Fig 1). Outlines the natural features of Mizoram climate, flora, fauna. Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, United States of America, Roles Shifting cultivation has often been blamed as the main cause of deforestation and forest degradation [911,14,15], but evidence is growing that when shifting cultivation is discontinued, it is often replaced by intensified land uses with higher environmental impacts [16,17]. Cultivation was also a traditional form of weed control. 5 Ways Climate Change Impacts Forests. It is important to note that these are indeed very rough possible scenarios and should be seen as expected trends rather than fixed percentages of decline. current practice of shifting cultivation in the region is an extravagant and unscientific form of land use. Mosaic landscapes under shifting cultivation, with their dynamic mix of managed and natural land covers, often fall through the cracks in remote sensingbased land cover and land use classifications, as these are unable to adequately capture such landscapes dynamic nature and complex spectral and spatial signatures. Trends in humid tropical Africa vary widely. South America shows mixed trends: Areas under shifting cultivation have clearly decreased in the southern Brazilian Amazon, whereas survey responses indicate that they are expanding in other parts of the Brazilian Amazon and in Peru. Surprisingly, our estimate is not too far from the 259 Mha proposed in Silva et al [1], even though their estimate excludes large areas under shifting cultivation and includes areas under other forms of agriculture and natural vegetation. No, Is the Subject Area "Africa" applicable to this article? But soil health is negatively impacted by industrial agriculture practices like monocropping, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and more. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.t001. This causes degradation of land, soil erosion, etc. Taking into consideration the stratification criteria, 328 one-degree cells were randomly selected to be validated. Despite the limited number of survey responses on Central and South America, it appears that here, unlike in Southeast Asia, areas under shifting cultivation have not seen a strong decline over the last 20 years. Writing original draft, India, Bangladesh), comparison of the maps (Fig 6) and the survey responses point to similar trends. The stratified validation sample design was chosen considering the distribution of the validation samples per occurrence class and the spatial distribution per continents. [3037]) would be insufficient, as they only cover very few of our one-degree cells and are not representative globally. Extreme precipitation events can disturb plant growth, particularly in recently burned forests, and make plants more vulnerable to flooding and soils to erosion. The area of interest ranges from 30S and 30N (6,704 one-degree cells on landmass), while the area investigated includes 2,817 cells. For this reason, the known widespread decrease in the occurrence of shifting cultivation in Southeast Asia (e.g. - Papua New Guinea: Shifting cultivation may persist well into the second half of this century, perhaps even until 2090. For India, Goswami et al. Yes The selection process ensured that all are experts in the field, but there may be disciplinary or personal differences in the way that especially the future of shifting cultivation was assessed. However, the expert survey confirms that shifting cultivation has fully disappeared between the 1970s and the 2000s in various areas of mainland Southeast Asia, such as southern Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, and China. These approaches, however, are still in the making and will require substantial resources. Such areas are found in parts of Southeast Asia (e.g. The result shows that 68% of population practice shifting cultivation where out of it 69% of the locals depend on other activities other than agriculture but a high percent of people still. Regarding South and Southeast Asia, a meta-analysis by van Vliet et al. Methane emissions are driving climate change. Here's how to - UNEP According to our tentative predictions, shifting cultivationwhich has been a globally important form of human crop cultivation for millenniamay be gone by the end of this century. Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland, Roles There's no doubt about it: the best thing we can do to fight climate change is keep forests standing. The climate of most European countries is wet This will be useful in improving the characterization of land surface and land use dynamics for earth system models and large-scale carbon and greenhouse gas accounting. Methodology, However, adequate prediction of land usebased emissions requires an improved understanding of megatrends in land use systems change [2,5]. In Central Africa, shifting cultivation also remains very widespread, with an even higher occurrence than in West Africa; in certain areas it is still expanding, such as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo [36]. The Data behind Deforestation Causes of Deforestation https://www.britannica.com/topic/shifting-agriculture. While only an approximation, this estimate is clearly smaller than the areas mentioned in the literature which range up to 1,000 million hectares. Formal analysis, Mosaic landscapes under shifting cultivation, with their dynamic mix of managed and natural land covers, often fall through the cracks in remote sensing-based land cover and land use classifications, as these are unable to adequately capture such landscapes' dynamic nature and complex spectral and spatial signatures. There is a need to transform shifting cultivation to sustainable intensification.
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