Slash and Burn Agriculture, Effects of

Slash-and-burn is a generic term for agricultural systems in which the fallow vegetation is slashed, left to dry and burned before cultivating crops. Currently, 200–500 million people worldwide use slash-and-burn agriculture, and it has been estimated to cover 259 million hectares. Slash-and-burn agriculture can be sustainable if cropping phases are short and fallow length sufficient to attain full recovery of the vegetation and soil properties before another cycle. Both, destruction of the vegetation and fire are detrimental for biodiversity. However, the effects are modified by the amount of fallow biomass burned, burn intensity, relative length of the cropping and the spatial scale of burning.