An initial soil profile study in ten different plots (unpublished own data), equally distributed over the entire toposequence,
confirmed that the soils on these slopes are predominantly Nitisols (WRB for soil classification (IUSS Working Group, 2015)), developed on basaltic outflows.
We consider Mount Elgon as a ‘model mountain’, which is justified by the presence of a similar climate-belt and a similar Nitisol-belt (Jones et al., 2013) as on the slopes of both Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro.