ABSTRACT
India’s northeast hill areas form a highly complex landscape mosaic. The region is inhabited by more than 100 tribes, each with its own linguistic and cultural characteristics. All the tribes are involved in shifting agriculture, or jhum, as it is known locally, and this is a major land-use system in the region (Ramakrishnan 1992). The jhum procedure involves slashing and burning the vegetation on a twoto-three hectare plot at a given stage of forest succession. The land is then cropped, usually for a year. It is seldom cropped for a second or third year, but if this does happen, the crop is usually restricted to perennials, such as bananas. Then the land is allowed to lie fallow, under natural regrowth. Therefore, the landscape is a patchwork of jhum plots at various stages of cropping and fallow.
