The visualization here shows a summary of some of the main global impacts: Food production accounts for over a quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions. Writing review & editing, Affiliation [24], who in turn had cited Dixon et al. 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. 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. Moreover, it is not possible to know in detail how the respondents arrived at their assessment of past and future extents of shifting cultivation. While keeping in mind the inherent limitations of these predictions, we can identify a number of more specific patterns. [55], citing the Wasteland Atlas [56], estimated the extent of shifting cultivation in the mid-2000s at 5.6 Mha (only area under cultivation), whereas the GLC2000-based estimate is 7.6 Mha [1]. About half of tropical deforestation is commonly explained by the expansion of traditional agriculture (shifting cultivation). In West and Central Africa, shifting cultivation is largely continuing and has even been expanding in certain areas. At the same time, shifting cultivation was one of the most sensitive variables in their model runs (along with wood harvesting). Researchers are currently developing automated approaches that are capable of processing decades of Landsat data and detecting the spatio-temporal patterns of shifting cultivation. Formal analysis, Large forest or vegetation areas are cleared and burned down for mining operations. 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. [68]). 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. - Central Africa: Shifting cultivation is estimated to persist well into the 2060s or longer due to the vast reserve of remote forested areas. This causes degradation of land, soil erosion, etc. Moderate warming and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may help some plants to grow faster. Effects of shifting cultivation on the environment: With special https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.g006. Methane emissions are driving climate change. Here's how to - UNEP Human expansion throughout the world caused that agriculture is a dominant form of land management globally. The period of cultivation is usually terminated when the soil shows signs of exhaustion or, more commonly, when the field is overrun by weeds. Yes It received 1 point in Livestock may be at risk, both directly from heat stress and indirectly from reduced quality of their food supply. However, future climate projections and carbon budget estimates on carbon land sinks and land use emissions based on earth system models depend on such predictions as input, so any attempt to provide an evidence base for them is certainly a worthwhile improvement compared to relying on historical trends or static futures. The land takes many years to replenish just at the cost of providing yield for 2 to 3 years. 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. e. More widespread signs of shifting cultivation were found mostly in small pockets, with the exception of larger areas in Central Africa (e.g. Copyright: 2017 Heinimann et al. In large parts of humid West Africa, shifting cultivation is still widespreadwith the exception of Nigeria, where it has all but disappeared and remains present only in small pockets. To approximate the current extent of shifting cultivation landscapes globally we used the results of a time-series analysis of mainly Landsat images characterizing forest extent and change [8], hereafter referred to as Global Forest Change (GFC) data set. 5 Ways Climate Change Impacts Forests. Our point of departure is a global map of the distribution of primitive subsistence agriculture produced by Butler in 1980 [13], a visual inspection of the distribution of shifting cultivation based on the 20002014 Global Forest Change (GFC) data set [8] and very highresolution satellite imagery, as well as an expert survey. 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. 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 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 Conceptualization, Climate change has caused increased heat, drought, and insect outbreaks. Shifting cultivation (SC) is a traditional land-use system to ensure livelihood in the Amazon (Villa et al., 2020).The traditional SC have small areas (0.1-0.8 ha) and short cycles of agriculture (1-3 years) with high crop diversity followed by fallow periods of 2-7 years [Fig. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Shifting cultivation decreases the activities of useful microorganisms found in the soil. 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. Slash-and-burn - Wikipedia archeological studies or historical studies of shifting cultivation in Europe), duplicates, and papers whose authors had deceased in the meantime, 282 papers remained. Depletion of Nutrients The primitive style of framing like slash and burn decreases the organic matter from the soil. - India and Bangladesh: Shifting cultivation is estimated to disappear by 2030. Secondly, the detection and monitoring of complex shifting cultivation mosaics using automated remote sensing approaches remains challenging [33,38,39] and the mentioned small spatio-temporal signature of vegetation clearings and regrowth is very specific to shifting cultivation and visual interpretation is therefore suitable [40]. Writing review & editing, Affiliation Impact of shifting cultivation on environment: an assessment on the This is the case for Peninsular Malaysia [28], parts of Sumatra [60], Yunnan Province in southern China [61]and the southern part of the Brazilian Amazon [62], for example. Climate Change. 5 Ways Climate Change Impacts Forests - College of Natural Resources News 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). In Asia, we expect that continued rapid economic development and the related changes in agricultural practices and, more importantly, in the economic structure (from the primary to the secondary and tertiary sectors) may cause shifting cultivation to disappear faster than in Africa or the Americas. (Source of imagery in 2D and 2E: Pansharpened Landsat 8 image, acquisition date January 5 2014, available from the U.S. Geological Survey.). The difference appears plausible if we consider that Spencers estimate is based on a hand-drawn map and that Asia has seen considerable decreases in shifting cultivation since that map was created (see section on recent trends below). The impacts of traditional agriculture on Environment are discussed below: 1. Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen K, Denmark, Roles Maps created in QGIS 2.16. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.g002. Its authors detected changes in what they call the rural complex for the period from 2000 to 2010. However, sustainable agriculture, which uses methods that protect the environment, public . The 270 first authors of these papers were listed and their email addresses were found. Environment; What you can do right now to advocate for the planet. Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland, 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]. Nonetheless, it is more evidence-based than the 1,000 Mha of unclear origin that are repeatedly cited in the literature (e.g. By zooming into areas where these clearings indicate possible shifting cultivation, we were able to determine visually whether they were accompanied by the pattern of fallows characteristic of shifting cultivation (Fig 1E) or not (Fig 1D). To date, we know little about its worldwide extent, underlying spatial patterns, or global trends in its past and future development. [1], possibly owing to the scale (1-km resolution) of the GLC2000 data sets. The producers and users accuracies were calculated for each occurrence class (< 1%; very low: 19%; low: 1019%; moderate: 2039%; high: 40%.) The five classes corresponded to the following rough ranges of area shares of shifting cultivation landscapes (currently cultivated fields plus all stages of fallows) within an entire one-degree cell: none: < 1%; very low: 19%; low: 1019%; moderate: 2039%; high: 40%. Our review of the more recent literature revealed surprisingly few studies containing regional or global estimates of areas under shifting cultivation. This became particularly evident when Hurtt et al. - Myanmar: Shifting cultivation is estimated to mostly disappear sometime between 2060 and 2090 if conflicts between union government and ethnic armed groups are resolved. PDF Cultivation and soil structure - Department of Primary Industries Our predictions of future extents of shifting cultivation are, of course, speculative. SCIplanet - Shifting Cultivation Yes Mozambique), northern mainland Southeast Asia (northern Laos and Myanmar), Borneo, and, to a lesser degree, Central America, Colombia, and Peru. See also slash-and-burn agriculture. Other Causes of Deforestation Forest Fires Fires are a natural part of the lifecycle of many forests, clearing the way for younger, smaller growth. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. (Fig 2B): Location of the one-degree cell of Fig 2C - 2E. The global shift towards this model of farming in the last sixty years has come with many costs. Formal analysis, 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. 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]. This raises issues of livelihood security and resilience among people currently depend on shifting cultivation, who may face reduced provision of ecosystem services and limited access to land due to the expansion of permanent agriculture, tree plantations, urban areas, and forest protection or restoration [18,19,44,72]. Shifting cultivation remains widespread, despite decreases in its extent over the last four to five decades. 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. and the overall accuracy and the Cohens kappa coefficient were calculated. Reducing intensification by shifting cultivation through sustainable Yet most of the common farming techniques employed in . Such areas are found in parts of Southeast Asia (e.g. This left us with 2,817 one-degree cells, which we then further investigated. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.t001. 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. [3037]) would be insufficient, as they only cover very few of our one-degree cells and are not representative globally. Conceptualization, Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Yes 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. Silva et al. Regarding South and Southeast Asia, a meta-analysis by van Vliet et al. Yes Intensive agriculture sometimes called factory farming lies at the heart of this emergency.. In addition, the methods used in the different national and regional assessments vary greatly and are far from being standardized. Causes and consequences of shifting cultivation and its - Springer 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. Trends in humid tropical Africa vary widely. 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479, Editor: Benjamin Poulter, Montana State University Bozeman, UNITED STATES, Received: September 2, 2016; Accepted: August 24, 2017; Published: September 8, 2017. - Vietnam and Laos: Shifting cultivation is likely to be greatly reduced by 2030 and completely gone by 2060. Thus that abandoned land then gets ample . 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. Analysis of Landsat data back to Landsat4 (launched in 1982) could provide more than 30 years of pan-tropical records, covering a time of significant change in the distribution of shifting cultivation across the humid tropics and perhaps also in the length of fallow periods. 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. Describes the cultivation systems employed and the problems generated erosion, burning, harm to indigenous plants and animals. 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. 10 Sustainable Farming Methods and Practices | Greentumble Visualization, 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. It coincided with the end of the last ice age and the beginning of the. Based on visual inspection of annual global deforestation data [8] from 2000 to 2014 and very high-resolution satellite imagery. 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. Yucatan Peninsula [66], northern South America (e.g. Agriculture CBSE Class 10 SST Geography Extra Questions By contrast, we expect that shifting cultivation will persist for a longer time in Africa, especially in Central Africa. Globally, sixty-two per cent of the investigated one-degree cells showed signs of shifting cultivation, with surprisingly similar shares across the 3 regions, ranging between 59 and 65% (Table 1) In absolute terms, the majority of cells with shifting cultivation are located in the Americas and Africa (almost 78%). asked to explain two reasons why shifting cultivation is expected to decline in the future. This number certainly requires further validation before it can be claimed to be an adequate estimate of the global area under shifting cultivation. - 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. Methodology, 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. The number of estimates of areas under shifting cultivation at regional and national scales in the literature is also very limited. b. This is called shifting cultivation. Shifting Cultivation: Definition & Examples | StudySmarter When the soil begins to turn infertile (usually after 3-5 years) the people move on. Cultivation (tillage) is a practice that has been introduced to Australia from Europe by our farming pioneers. Half of the world's habitable land is used for agriculture. Sample: 2A Score: 7 This response earned full credit and demonstrates a comprehensive understanding of subsistence agriculture and the sustainability of shifting cultivation in the past and for the future. - Indicate how you expect the shifting cultivation occurrences to change in the future for the following periods (no change, expansion, decline, disappearance): 20152030; 20302060; 20602090. This figure was elaborated by the first author using ArcGIS 10.4. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.g003. 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. 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. Writing original draft, Agricultural methane doesn't only come from animals, though. Shifting Cultivation: Cropping Patterns, Jhum Cycle and Problems PLoS ONE 12(9): Fig 2 illustrates this process for one sample cell. - Madagascar: Shifting cultivation is expected to remain widespread, especially along the eastern escarpment, until well beyond 2030. 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. The analysis presented is primarily qualitative with a supplementary quantitative analysis of the causes of forest . Shifting cultivation causes a high national waste as it converts the green land into a barren land. Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland, Roles 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. Supervision, 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. The Neolithic Revolutionalso referred to as the Agricultural Revolutionis thought to have begun about 12,000 years ago. The negative effects of abusing shifting cultivation are devastating and far-reaching in degrading the environment and ecology of the affected region. northern Zambia and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo), parts of southeastern Africa (e.g. Yes 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. Corrections? Meanwhile, about 54% people, living in the rural areas, are engaged in practicing it. We compared this result to Butlers (1980) binary (presence or absence) map of shifting cultivation, gridded into one-degree cells. 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. Simran IAS Academy on Instagram: "#Learnbymaps is here to explain you [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. Growing Seasons in a Changing Climate | USDA Climate Hubs 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. 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. 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. 2], while long cycles comprise fallow periods of more than 15 years (Villa et al., 2020; Villa et al., 2017 . The ashes are then mixed with the soil. 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. 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 red hatching in (B) indicates the 1/100 degree cells that were classified as having shifting cultivation. (2017) A global view of shifting cultivation: Recent, current, and future extent. 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). 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. Human influence on the land is accelerating because of rapid population growth and increasing food requirements. Environmental Impacts of Food Production - Our World in Data 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. Validation, 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. 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. 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]. Maps created in QGIS 2.16. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.g001. What is shifting cultivation? What are its disadvantages? - Vedantu What is the Relationship Between Deforestation And Climate Change? But soil health is negatively impacted by industrial agriculture practices like monocropping, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and more. Using recent regional and national automated classification of shifting cultivation as reference (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184479.g004. No, Is the Subject Area "Asia" applicable to this article? Omissions? We estimate that shifting cultivation landscapes currently cover roughly 280 million hectares worldwide, including both cultivated fields and fallows. Fig 1A shows a one-degree square of northern Laos. Is the Subject Area "Land use" applicable to this article? There is a need to transform shifting cultivation to sustainable intensification. Causes and consequences of shifting cultivation and its alternative in For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click The area of interest ranges from 30S and 30N (6,704 one-degree cells on landmass), while the area investigated includes 2,817 cells.
