Scientists in the Canary Islands and Portugal are collecting water from fog to enable reforestation of degraded landscapes
As summer fires continue to devastate huge areas of woodland in Spain, France and Portugal, and drought plagues Europe and the UK leaving tens of thousands of acres at risk of desertification, some scientists are busy collecting fog.
The EU-backed Life Nieblas project (niebla is Spanish for fog) is using fog collectors in Gran Canaria in Spain’s Canary Islands, and Portugal, to improve degraded landscape and fuel reforestation.
Fog collectors – sheets of plastic mesh erected in the path of the wind – already exist but have never been used efficiently, says Vicenç Carabassa, the project’s head scientist, who works for the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (Creaf), a public research institute at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. As wind blows fog through the mesh, water droplets collect and fall into the containers below.
Fog collection is particularly applicable in restoring the Canary Islands’ laurisilva [laurel forests], which themselves exist by collecting fog water,” says Carabassa. The water droplets from the fog condense on the trees’ shiny, waxy leaves. “The system allows saplings to flourish until they are mature enough to capture water themselves,” he adds. Laurisilva is sub-tropical rainforest populated by evergreen species, though not necessarily the familiar laurel trees found in parks and gardens.
To operate well, fog collectors need both fog and wind, conditions that exist in the Canaries and Portugal, but less so in the Mediterranean, where forest fires and desertification are a growing problem.
“We’re still trying to discover what are the optimal conditions for fog collectors to work,” says Carabassa, who adds that laurisilva restoration can help to replenish the aquifers that are under constant strain in the Canaries.
As well as the Canary Islands, where Creaf is working with the Gran Canaria local authority, the public company Gesplan, which manages the project, and several other research institutes and public organisations, the technique will be tested in maritime areas around Barcelona and the El Bruc municipality in northern Catalonia, which was ravaged by a huge fire in 2015.