Introduction

Abstract

The introduction begins with a narrative of the history of soil survey and classification in the Philippines, from the very first conducted by Clarence Dorsey in 1903 and through the succeeding decades until the present, and the soil survey prospects in the immediate future. From the organization that studies the Philippine soils, we move on to the soil itself, to understand more about soils. We discuss the fundamentals of pedology and the description of the soil profile which will be the major structural content of the next three chapters. We then continue by applying these pedological concepts, specifically the factors of soil formation, given the Philippine geological setting. This provides an overview of the soils in the Philippines. We temporarily deviate from the technical discussions from the geological history of soils to a sidelight that we could glean from the names of the Philippine soils. Since the soils are named after places, some of these bear witness to the history of the Philippines. Contrary to the notions of many westerners, the country had culture and civilization centuries before the arrival of Spain. That before our colonization and westernization by Spain, we had an Islamic culture, and before the arrival of Islam to the Southeast Asian region, we had a Hindu culture as the rest of the region was. Finally, we return to the technical aspects of soil classification and nomenclature system, explaining how a soil is classified and named. Generally, this is part of the legend that accompanies soil survey maps and reports. A brief summary of the original soil series groupings is presented. This is a classic work and referred to every now and then even by younger crop of soil surveyors.