An estimated 260 million indigenous peoples live in Asia. Most of them inhabit forested uplands where a large number of them practice shifting cultivation, which is also called as swidden cultivation or rotational farming. For them, shifting cultivation is not merely a technique of farming; it is their ways of life. Government policies and laws have attempted to limit or outright ban shifting c...

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. But information about such landscapes is urgently needed to improve the outcom...

a field study was undertaken with four farming systems (fs) such as; grasses and fodders, agro-forestry, agriculture (new farming systems) and shifting cultivation (old practice), to investigate the effect of land use on the soil properties, erosion and crop productivity on a loamy acidic alfisol. besides crops, the livestock were also kept and their dropping were incorporated in the respective...

The delineation of shifting cultivation landscapes using remote sensing in mountainous regions is challenging. On the one hand, there are difficulties related to the distinction of forest and fallow forest classes as occurring in a shifting cultivation landscape in mountainous regions. On the other hand, the dynamic nature of the shifting cultivation system poses problems to the delineation of ...

Shifting cultivation is the primary means of livelihood for subsistence farmers throughout the humid forests of the tropics. Sustainable use of the resource base as a source of fertile land for cultivation requires long periods of fallow and the ability to move the zone of active cultivation from one location to another over time. At the individual patch or field level, shifting cultivation is ...

Agricultural expansion is one of the prime driving forces of global land cover change. Despite the increasing attention to the factors that cause it, the patterns and processes associated with indigenous cultivation systems are not well understood. This study analyzes agricultural change associated with subsistence-based indigenous production systems in the lower Pastaza River Basin in the Ecua...

Shifting cultivation is a traditional agricultural practice in most tropical regions of the world and has the potential to provide for human livelihoods while hosting substantial biodiversity. Little is known about the resilience of shifting cultivation to increasing agricultural demands on the landscape or to unexpected disturbances. To investigate these issues, we develop a simple social-ecol...