Shifting cultivation or “slash and burn agriculture” is an ancient form of subsistence type agriculture still practiced in Tripura as well as in the Gumti river basin. Within the basin area it mainly practiced at the hilly track of Atharamura, Longtarai and Baramura hill ranges. In this traditional type of cultivation system forest area is cleared by slash and burn process. Every year vast forest area of are destructed as a result of the practice of shifting cultivation. In recent decades due to excessive population pressure on land, the fallow length period of shifting cultivation cycles become as short as 4 to 5 years in Tripura. As a result the secondary forest does not get enough time to regeneration properly. Some methodology has been adopted for understand the nature of environmental degradation process. The main objective of this study is to assess the impact of shifting cultivation on the environmental changes, which were mainly Deforestation, Biodiversity loss, Climate change, Soil degradation etc. The input morphometric maps have been prepared on the base of satellite data by using GIS and RS Platforms like Arc GIS 10.1 and Global mapper.
