Luzon Cordillera, Philippines

This scene is an original illustration set in Luzon Cordillera, Philippines. It lies in the tropics, where the climate is tropical monsoon — a short drier season inside a wet year.

Flooded rice terraces step up a steep mountainside, each paddy a mirror of sky between rows of young green seedlings. Curving stone retaining walls trace every terrace edge. Forested ridges rise behind, and the near-overhead sun leaves almost no shadow.

Why are rice terraces cut into slopes this steep?

Terracing this steep is a water-management structure before it is a field: each level holds a few centimetres of standing water and passes the surplus down, so a whole mountainside becomes one irrigation system. Building it in stone rather than earth means the rain is heavy enough to wash earth away. Rice under standing water needs constant warmth — and the vertical sun places it deep in the tropics.

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