Indigenous societies around the world manage large tracts of tropical forest that are crucial for combating climate change through a customary land management practice known as swidden (aka, “slash-and-burn”) agriculture. Swidden is a prototypical example of a coupled human and natural system, and it has been studied by social and natural scientists since the 18th century, however, there are surprisingly few formal models that can explain it full range of ecosystem outcomes, which can include deforestation, sustainability, and even ecosystem enhancement. In this talk, I will present two new ethnographically informed agent-based models of the social and environmental dynamics that account for the fundamental dynamics of swidden agriculture and results from a remote sensing analysis of 18 swidden societies worldwide that indicate the signature of adaptive self-organization and emergent sustainability.