Shifting Cultivation and Secondary Succession in the Tropics

This book documents and systematizes findings in shifting cultivation over the last six decades and also characterizes secondary succession and related changes that fallow vegetation undergoes to the process of soil fertility restoration under bush fallow.

Shifting cultivation or rotational bush fallowing is the predominant system of arable farming in the humid and sub-humid tropics where several hundred million people depend on this system of agriculture for their livelihood. Shifting Cultivation and Secondary Succession in the Tropics documents and systematizes findings in shifting cultivation over the last six decades and also characterizes secondary succession and related changes that fallow vegetation undergoes to the process of soil fertility restoration under bush fallow. It includes unique features such as graphical illustration of the organic matter equilibrium concept; correlation and multiple regression analysis; core-periphery analogy, encapsulated in the spatio-temporal model and the graphical unified model of succession and soil fertility restoration, therefore providing essential reading for researchers and students within tropical agriculture and related fields such as forestry, geography, environmental science and tropical development.