The European Life Nieblas project concludes that fog collectors are very effective in restoring the most inhospitable areas. Thanks to the fog collectorstwo areas affected by the flames in 2017 and 2019 have been successfully reforested, a laurel forest in Gran Canaria and another in Portugal, also an old quarry in Catalonia, three highly complex projects. Chile, Italy and Cape Verde have begun to use the fog collectors to bring water to the most difficult places reforest, irrigate crops, water livestock or even for human consumption in remote areas.
On the Island of The IronIn the Canary Islands, water is a scarce commodity and its inhabitants have had to manage to obtain it throughout history. One of the oldest ways was the tree Garoé (Ocotea foetens)which, like other trees that live surrounded by fog and humidity, traps small droplets of water, thus, the population stored the drops that fell from the leaves in a well.
It is precisely this idea that inspires the European project. Life Mistswhich has tested and improved 3 types of fog collectors that imitate this function of trees. The project, which began in 2020, now presents its final report in which he concludes that This technology is very efficient and one of the most useful for bringing water to the most inhospitable and complex areas of the world.. During the project, it has served to reforest and water the forest of laurisilva del Barranco El Andén in Gran Canaria, and to reforest a quarry in Catalonia and a burned forest in Portugal. All of them, reforestation projects that were intended to obtain very limited results due to the aridity of the area and the impossibility of bringing water to the land to water the trees..
In the Barranco de Gran Canaria, around 40 collectors – with a collection area of 135m2 – of three different types have been installed to reforest 35.8 hectares, which have collected 121901 liters of water in total; 15,000 trees of various species of laurel forest have been planted, such as the Canarian strawberry tree or heather, with a survival rate of 86% – a fact that doubles the survival rate of traditional reforestation, which is around 40% –. This has also meant that the forest’s potential to capture atmospheric carbon has been recovered, specifically, we estimate about 175 tons of CO2 per year.
The project has also used innovative reforestation and irrigation systems. One of them is the Cocoon method, cardboard donuts They are buried in the ground full of water and hydrate and protect the tree during the first year of life, the most sensitive, and then decompose into the ground. Regarding irrigation, a device has been developed that allows water to be discharged automatically without any type of energy supply or CO2 emissions. This methodology helps everything work autonomously, something essential in the most complex and remote projects. In addition, it has managed to reduce the carbon footprint, since no machinery is used to transport water from one place to another, nor electrical systems for irrigation, and the water footprint is also reduced, by not exploiting aquifers or rivers.
Water for the most isolated areas of the world
The key to the project is that, for the first time, it demonstrates that there are effective and autonomous collectors that can help the most complex areas to obtain water. For example, five collectors have been replicated in a forest area in Vouzela (Portugal), which suffered a large fire in 2017, where species such as the common oak and the cork oak have been replanted. Also andn In Catalonia, 60 individual structures have been installed in collaboration with the RESTARC project to replant Mediterranean species such as wild olive or mastic in a quarry under restoration in Garraf.
In the Canary Islands, the team Life Mists collaborates with other projects and administrations to extend the collectors to other islands and help alleviate the water crisis. For example, in Tenerife they have installed some to irrigate chestnut trees, a crop that requires a lot of water. Around 9 collectors will also be used to restore the vegetation of the Famara massif in Lanzarote, which is practically desert right now. And, in the case of Gran Canaria, We are collaborating with the Mosaico project so that 400 sheep can drink ‘fog water’ while grazing in the forestwhich until now had to be carried with buckets of water.
But, there is more, internationallythe project has managed to reach the town of Chungungo, a fishing town in Chile, which is beginning to use the collectors to supply drinking water to the population, “tests are still being carried out, but the data is positive,” says Saúl Oliva. . For its part, the University of Sapienza in Italy is designing prototypes based on those of Life Mists to reforest burned areas in northern Italy.
On the African continent, there is also collaboration with the Biflores entity of Cape Verde, which has installed around 5 rudimentary collectors in the brava islanda town of extreme poverty where water is a very limited commodity, with the meshes that we use for our collectors and some wooden structures that they make themselves, They have managed to obtain 1000 liters of water a day (an impressive figure)which they use to water crops and water livestock.
Three types of fog collectors
Life Nieblas has used three types of collectors. The most innovative one was born within the project, it was designed by the ICIA and the ULL, and It is inspired by the needles – leaves – of the Canarian pinewhich are specially designed to trap fog droplets. The structure of this innovative needle collector (i-FWC) is simple and is presented as a metal row comb, which can be installed on two floors to increase the surface area to capture water; “It has been the most efficient design, it is modular and easy to assemble, it is also the most economical.
On the other hand, there are tower collectors, which are made up of a polyhedral structure, covered with polyethylene or volumetric mesh – which is normally used to stabilize road slopes – both materials are very accessible on the market and very useful for catch the fog.
In addition, smaller reforestation structures that use polyethylene mesh have also been used, thus this structure surrounds the plant and provides it with a triple service; since it protects it from herbivores, while capturing environmental humidity, maintaining soil moisture and reducing insolation on the plant, fundamental aspects for establishing small seedlings. The requirements for installing any type of collector are simple: there must be fog and wind so that the microdroplets collide with the device, conditions that can occur in coastal, desert or mountain areas..