Under the supervision of

ER. C. John Wesley

Dr. Rocky Pebam
Asst. Professor Scientist/Engineer SD

Centre of Geospatial Technologies

SHUATS, Allahabad UP 211007 North Eastern Space Application Centre
DOS, Umiam, Meghalaya 793122

Presented by

Siljrang R Marak
M.sc Remote Sensing GIS
16MSRSGIS004
Centre Of Geospatial Technologies
SHUATS, Allahabad UP 211007

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INTRODUCTION

 Shifting cultivation is a traditional form of agriculture practiced mostly by tribals in the

hilly tracts of the region. This agricultural system is termed ‘Shifting cultivation’
indicating movement from one plot to another or ‘Slash and burn’ referring to the means
of destroying the forest lands. It is also known as ‘Rotational bush fallow agriculture’ as
the system functions in a cyclic manner. Shifting cultivation mainly involves selection
and removal of forests by slash and burn techniques followed by mixed cropping,
harvesting and fallowing for a short period before abandoning the site.
 The rationale of shifting cultivation is simple. The original forests and the fallowed
areas in which trees and other plant species grow provide several benefits during the
fallow period trees replenish the soil organic matter, thereby improving soil structure and
prevent soil erosion and excessive water runoff. Thus, ideally slash and burn cultivation is
ecologically stable under very low density of human population and was operated
successfully for subsistence. However, in recent times increased population density led to
intensive shifting cultivation with shorter fallows resulting in poor yields and decline in
soil fertility.
 India is the only country where shifting cultivation is confined to hill areas in the
Northeast, Southern Orissa and tribal belts of Andhra Pradesh and is commonly known
by the local vernacular names. The problem of shifting cultivation is acute in Andhra
Pradesh, Orissa and North-eastern states whereas it is limited in Madhya Pradesh and
Bihar. As per the task force of Ministry of Agriculture nearly 9.95 million hectares of land
in India is under shifting cultivation.

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OBJECTIVEs

The main objectives of the project are-

 To analyse the shifting cultivation of different years (2000-2017).
 Mapping of cultivation areas according to changes pattern of jhumming
practice in Garo hills District.
 Identify the current jhum fallow fields in the study area (those fields are 18, 15,
12, 9, 6, and 3 years fallow).
 To collect the accurate data (sample) from the areas of jhum fallow field. Such
as identification of species of trees, regeneration of tree species, shrubs, herbs,
Bamboos grasses etc.

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Study area

In Meghalaya shifting cultivation is extensively practiced in the districts of East

Garo Hills district, West Garo Hills district as well as North and South Garo
Hills District. Shifting cultivation is known as ‘A·ba cha.a’ in the local. The
present project was undertaken to estimate the areal extent of shifting
cultivation in East Garo Hills district of Meghalaya, by using remote sensing
and GIS techniques.
The study area namely East Garo Hills district is part of the famous Nokrek
range of Meghalaya. The total area of East Garo Hills district is 2603 sq.km. and
is situated within the geographic co-ordinates of 25.24ºN & 26.10ºN Latitude
and 90ºE & 91.3ºE Longitude.

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Fig: Location map of study area in East Garo Hills District, Meghalaya

Fig 2: Identifying jhum fallow fields in study area

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Materials and Methods

Software for the analysis of data

ERDAS Imagine 2014
Arc GIS 10.4
Acquisition of spatial data
Landsat-5 and Landsat-8

 Methodology of the study involves the following steps

The delineation and mapping works of “A·ba cha·a” or jhumming areas
under shifting cultivation was done by visual interpretation of the satellite
acquired imagery with the help of ground verification. To identify the
shifting cultivation areas.
Initially, the satellite imagery data provided by landsat_5 and Landsat-
8 have been stacked by using layer selection and layer stacking by opening
the Raster tool in ERDAS Imagine 2014. After this process, selection of
input and output file is required in. And the layers are created by using the
subset and chib tool in Raster, by extracting the large image to a smaller
image providing proper input and output file and finally image was created
using AOI file.

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By opening the image in new shape file in Arc GIS 10.4, each polygons observed
in image layers from the particular years of (2000-2018) have been digitised by
clicking the editor and selecting each image layer using cut polygon tool. Later
on the file was exported to another shapefile by clicking the exported data
providing with accurate names.
After completing the process of digitising, all the polygons from exported
shapefile were unioned using the analysis tools in arc tool box. For the
shapefile where all the polygons have unioned together A table was then
created for current jhum using the attributes table. With the help of the
attributes table, all the areas of current jhum cycle, and other areas such as
fallow fields and non-jhum fields were analyzed and the areas of current jhum
and non-jhum with the total areas were calculated using Microsoft excel sheet.
And finally the jhum fallow field from (those areas should be 18, 15, 12, 9, 6, 3
years fallow) from the area of East Garo Hills were identified by Google earth
and using GPS. All the required data needs to be collected, like identifying the
species of trees, regeneration of tree species, shrubs, herbs bamboos etc, were
done by surveying each fallow fields from the study area.

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Conclusion
 Shifting cultivation is an important factor of livelihood pattern of peoples of
Garo hill region. It is important to note that the trend of shifting cultivation is
decreases day-by-day due to implementation of new policies.
It is observed that the Garo Hill districts of Meghalaya dominated by the
open forest cover mainly Betel nut, strawberry, Pine apples, chestnut, cashew
nut, strawberry, palm tea estate and rubber plantation which are practices in
the gentle and moderately steep slopes. The changing pattern of agriculture
from traditional to plantation crops helps to reduce the trends of shifting
cultivation.
However, it is necessary to take initiatives for more awareness among the mass,
encourage trace cultivation and monitoring of moderately steep slope for
reducing shifting cultivation.

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THANK YOU