mortiz085

By Dr. Luz Geneston Asio Department of Agronomy, Visayas State University The highlands in the middle of Cebu which extends from the city in the east to Balamban/Asturias in the west, presents a beautiful mixture of protected landscapes with good secondary forest cover, and crop production systems consisting of orchard particularly mango, annual crops, vegetables and cut flowers.  Beautiful views of the Cebu Highlands The very beautiful scenery reminds visitors of Baguio City or some foreign places like Indonesia or Taiwan. Clearly observable even on distant undulating slopes are the mango trees which are adapted to the agroclimatic conditions of Cebu.  Mango trees are abundant in certain parts of the landscape Cebuanos are widely known to be corn eaters. This explains why corn is the most widely grown grain crop in the highlands. On red acidic soils from igneous rocks as well as on dark calcareous soils from limestone, nutrient deficiency symptoms (N, P) are clearly observabl...

Contributed by Dr. Ian A. Navarrete Humboldt Fellow Soil Science of Tropical and Subtropical Ecosystems Buesgen Institute University of Göttingen, Germany Geoecology, a term coined some 41 years ago by the geomorphologist Carl Troll who was at the time professor at the University of Bonn, Germany, is a broad integrative term to the study of forms and functions of terrestrial geoecosystem (Huggett, 1995). It emphasizes the interdependency and/or inter-relationships of the ecological biosphere with landscape and hence sometimes equated with landscape ecology. For example, the movement and distribution of solutes across soil landscapes are influenced by the geomorphic position in the soil within the landscape thus influencing soil genesis (Sommer and Schlichting, 1997) and vegetation development (Huggett, 1975).  Fig 1. Relation of primary forest and grasslands of Samar During our fieldwork at the Samar Island Natural Park (along the Paranas-Taft road at about 300 m above sea level) i...