The transition from shifting cultivation to perennial crop cultivation is observed in many regions across the tropics, to meet environmental and socio-economic challenges. In some areas, small-scale farmers have engaged in crop diversification through agroforestry, a practice that enables production for self-consumption and income, while coping with environmental constraints and heterogeneity. This is the case in a zone of Vavatenina commune of Madagascar, where the Betsimisaraka small-scale farmers have abandoned the traditional shifting rice cultivation on hills (tanety) in favor of agroforestry, mainly based on clove tree cultivation. These different tanety land uses shape complex agricultural landscapes that seems to result from various types of agroforests. Despite the major interest Vavatenina original landscapes may have from a sustainability perspective, its composition and spatial structure have not been studied so far. However, the high heterogeneity of these landscapes, at different scales (the plot, the village territory, the commune), raises methodological challenges. Similarly, scale related environmental factors, such as topography, slope and proximity to the road, appear to play on this heterogeneity, and thus required to be identified and their effect assessed. Our study applied an original method to meet this challenge by combining a landscape spatial analysis with a participatory mapping of agroforests. First, we described the composition and spatial organization of agroforestry at two scales, from that of agroforests in the landscape to that of species within agroforestry plots. Second, we analyzed the effects of topography and isolation level on the landscape and agroforests heterogeneity. We used a remote sensing method to quantify the proportion of the different tanety land uses, and analyze how agroforestry especially fits into the landscape and according to which environmental determinants. Then, we applied a participatory mapping method to