The DOST-PCAARRD granted Dr. Amalia E. Almazol’s team another year to continue their funded research project that focuses on the inventory assessment of flora, fauna, and macrofungi in Mt. Banahaw de Lucban (MBdL), under the agency’s Mt. Banahaw de Lucban Biodiversity Assessment, Valuation, and Conservation Program. Dr. Reynaldo V. Ebora, PCAARRD’s Executive Director, and Dr. Jofel Calora, PCAARRD’s Deputy Executive Director for Research and Development, agreed that the funding was worthwhile given the commendable outputs reported to them during the virtual meeting with the proponents on March 15, 2022.
Besides the assessment of the diversity of the flora, fauna, and microfungi, the 5 million worth of project also aims to collect and preserve sample specimens of plants or flora, model a wildlife habitat characteristic using remote sensing and GIS techniques, and visually document all species through photographs.
Dr. Almazol, the faculty-researcher of SLSU College of Agriculture (Cag), works with other faculty-researchers of the same college, namely, For. Ronald C. Garcia, Dr. Francisco Beltran, and For. Eraldwin Dimailig. The team also has For. Dennis E. Pulan of SLSU Cag as their technical consultant and Mr. Almar John A. Luna, a Cag alumnus, as their Research Assistant. Mr. John Louis S. Narinay, Mr. Liam Karl Manago, and Mr. Daniel Galeon are serving as additional support staff.
The study was also implemented with the assistance of the Forest Rangers. Mr. Joemar Alfornon, Mr. Necitas Salumbides, and Mr. Leogin Salvan.
