Banaue

Banaue, officially the '' is a of the Philippines in the province of,. According to the, it has a population of people.It is widely known as the site of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Batad Rice Terraces and Bangaan Rice Terraces.BarangaysBanaue is politically subdivided into 18 barangays.DemographicsIn the, the population of Banaue was people, with a density of {{sigfig{{PH wikidata.Ifugao Rice TerracesSometimes called by locals as the "Eighth Wonder of the World", the Ifugao Rice Terraces begin at the base of the mountain range and extend several thousand feet upwards. Two of the terrace clusters in Banaue, namely Bangaan and Batad, are part of the UNESCO World Heritage inscription. It is said that their length, if put end to end, would encircle half of the globe. Built 2,000 years ago, the rice terraces manifest the engineering skill and ingenuity of the sturdy Ifugaos. They are irrigated by means of mountain streams and springs that have been tapped and channelled into canals that run downhill through the rice terraces.The rice terraces once stretched north-east to Cagayan and as far south as Quezon. However they are now slowly being abandoned and showing signs of deterioration. The 1990 Luzon earthquake damaged some of the terraces' irrigation systems, while El Niño triggered droughts that led giant earthworms to erode the terraces' soil. Furthermore, the rice variety most suited to the area's cool climate is not a high-yielding crop; because it takes so long to mature, some Ifugao families have abandoned their land in the rice terraces in favour of land that reaps faster rewards.