
Catching fog in drought-stricken Chile - tomrod
https://www.dw.com/en/catching-fog-in-drought-stricken-chile/a-44603174
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malyk
Just minutes ago I got home from a camping trip up in Sonoma County near
Occidental. We camped under a small grove of redwood trees. The first night
the fog rolled in around 3am or so and we woke up to “rain” hitting our tent a
few hours later. The second night the fog rolled in around 8pm and it was
“raining” all night while we cooked dinner and then, all night long as we
slept, it sounded like a light drizzle outside.

My point being, if you can build tree/like structures, use nets, etc you can
capture a significant amount of water. Coast Redwoods are adapted to it, but
it was pretty awesome seeing their water gathering in practice and how
effective it was. Our stuff is soaked!

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jsilence
I was thinking the same. On Gomera the "fog forest" is providing a major part
of water for the island. Planting trees is probably much cheaper than setting
up the nets.

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icebraining
If you siphon off the water captured by trees, won't you risk killing them?

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malyk
I’m certainly not a specialist here, but I think it depends on the tree.

The Redwoods didn’t generate enough ground water to saturate more than a
quarter inch of soil, so I think they must be able to use the water more
directly in their leaves and branches.

So it might not be that you can just plant a bunch of trees that aren’t
adapted to getting their water from fog, but it might be possible to build
“tree like” fog water capture systems instead of fine mesh nets. Then again,
maybe not.

I was mostly surprised by seeing the fog capture up close and how efficient it
was.

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funkaster
This is nothing new, maybe an improved version of the same idea, but farmers
have been doing this for at least 20 years. I remember travelling on vacation
to the north (I lived in Santiago) and it was a common sight to see those nets
on the plots. Still, a very good idea and prob the only "reliable" way to get
water for the crops in that region.

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Xt-6
I am curious what will be the consequences on this if it use more widely. The
water they capture is not going somewhere.

