Abstract
Shifting cultivation (jhum cultivation), a common practice of converting forest land into agricultural land by slash and burn is threatening the ecosystem. This study assesses the effect of shifting cultivation cycles on soil quality in the North-eastern Himalayan region using a minimum of soil properties. To achieve this goal, a soil quality index (SQI) approach and multivariate techniques were used for surface (0-30 cm) and subsurface (30-70 cm) layers of soils in the forest, jhum land, and jhum fallow areas. The highest variability among land uses was found for clay content, SOC (soil organic carbon), exchangeable Mg and K, CEC (cation exchange capacity), and the Ca/Mg relationship. On the contrary, the lowest variation was recorded in bulk density (BD), porosity, and pH. The results of the principal component analysis (PCA) show BD, soil texture, available nitrogen (Nav), available phosphorus (Pav), available potassium (Kav), calcium (Ca) and sodium (Na) as the major indicators of soil quality. The study indicated that surface layers of forest soils have a lower soil quality when compared to jhum lands. Although jhum lands show a better soil quality compared to forests, their continued cultivation without any fertilisation and subsequent depletion of the soil nutrients can cause a degradation of soil quality as observed in jhum fallow lands. The use of these selected indicators for soil quality assessment was useful in terms of saving time and costs.
Highlights
Soils are key resources for human activities and natural ecosystems (Rodrigo-Comino, López-Vicente, et al, 2020), establish suitable indicators to assess their quality has been key for scholars around the world such as in the Mediterranean belt (e.g. Ceccarelli, Bajocco, Perini, & Salvati, 2014; Colantoni, Ferrara, Perini, & Salvati, 2015; Sánchez-Navarro et al, 2015)
The current study aims to focus on studying the variability in soil properties under forest, jhum land, and jhum fallow land, using the minimum number of soil properties to assess the possible soil quality changes prior to designing a land management plan
Among the three different land-use types, a higher mean value of bulk density (BD) is recorded in the jhum lands (1.06 Mg m-3), followed by the forest (1.02 Mg m-3) and the fallow jhum (0.90 Mg m-3)
Summary
Soils are key resources for human activities and natural ecosystems (Rodrigo-Comino, López-Vicente, et al, 2020), establish suitable indicators to assess their quality has been key for scholars around the world such as in the Mediterranean belt (e.g. Ceccarelli, Bajocco, Perini, & Salvati, 2014; Colantoni, Ferrara, Perini, & Salvati, 2015; Sánchez-Navarro et al, 2015). The process of converting the forest land by slash and burn into annual crops called “shifting cultivation” (Singh, Bordoloi, Kumar, Hazarika & Parmar et al, 2014). The Northeastern Himalayan (NEH) region of India is characterized by unique agro-ecological conditions, which makes it the centre of speciation for many plant species (Mishra & Sarkar, 2020) It is one of the twelve biodiversity hot-spots in the world, having 65% of its area under forests and 16% under agriculture (Saha, Chaudhary & Somasundaram, 2012). The major agriculture practice and source of income in the NEH is the shifting cultivation locally known as jhum (Yadav, 2013) This shifting cultivation cycle is characterized by certain stages, starting from the selection of site, slashing and burning of native vegetation, crop cultivation from 1 to 2 years and leaving the land abandoned from 10 to 12 years. In the last few decades, shifting cultivation is leading to rapid changes in land uses in the Nagaland state of NEH (Patel, Karmakar, Sanjog, Kumar & Chowdhury et al, 2013; Chase & Singh, 2014)
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