Slash-and-burn agriculture

Slash-and-burn agriculture clears vegetation by cutting and burning it, then cultivates crops in the ash-enriched soil. Fields are often abandoned or left fallow as fertility declines.

Swidden: A shifting cultivation system in which vegetation is cleared, burned, and followed by periods of cultivation and fallow. This closely related farming system names the field-and-fallow cycle often associated with slash-and-burn.
Subsistence agriculture: Farming primarily intended to produce food and other necessities for the farmer's household. Slash-and-burn commonly supports households growing food for their own use.
Deforestation: The large-scale removal of forest, usually through conversion to another land use. Shortened fallows and permanent conversion can turn temporary clearing into lasting forest loss.
Deforestation by fire: The permanent or large-scale removal of forests through burning to convert land to another use. Unlike rotational clearing, this form of fire-driven forest loss does not depend on returning fallow plots.
Shifting cultivation: An agricultural system that moves cultivation among plots as fields are left fallow and soil fertility recovers. Slash-and-burn is one way to clear plots within this broader rotational system.
Tropical agriculture: Farming systems practiced in tropical climates, where heat, rainfall, and soils shape production. Many well-known slash-and-burn systems operate in humid tropical regions.
Biomass burning: The combustion of living or recently living plant material, releasing gases and particles into the atmosphere. Clearing fires emit smoke and greenhouse gases as vegetation burns.
Prescribed burn: A deliberately set fire conducted under specified conditions to meet land-management objectives. Prescribed burns manage vegetation without necessarily clearing a field for cultivation.
Fallow: Land temporarily left uncultivated so vegetation can regrow and soil conditions can recover. Fallow periods help restore plots after crops have used available nutrients.
Agroforestry: Land-use systems that combine trees with crops or livestock on the same land. Agroforestry can maintain tree cover while producing crops, unlike clearing an entire plot.

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