The Fog Tree is an aesthetically pleasing tree-like structure with fog catching “branches” that collect fog water and direct it towards plants in a garden.
Fog Tree: Functional art project for garden education
The Fog Tree Trunk has been set in concrete at the LifeLab garden
Thanks to Lizette (and her dad) and Alan for the hard work. Now we install the branches and strands.
The first stage of building the Fog Tree at UCSC LifeLab
The Fog Garden
We have collected 46 gallons of water since Jun 15 (61 days). It’s only 0.11 L/m2/d, far below the threshold for a fog supersite (~1 L/m2/d). Santa Cruz is in a partial fog shadow due to the southerly exposure to the ocean. Northwest is the best. Despite the reduced liquid water content of the air, we have collected enough water to make a meaningful difference in the growing of our vegetable garden.
Fog collection totals 6/15/23 to 8/15/23
176 liters or 46 gallons! This was collected on 26m2 of mesh area over a period of 61 d, resulting in fog deposition flux of 0.11 L/m2/d
Impressive fog harvesting volumes 8-8-23
Field testing the Autonomous Fog Collector
The AFC v 1.0 is being field tested at the Whale Point meteorological station at Big Creek Reserve. This device senses environmental conditions including visibility with a MiniOFS to detect fog events, open the doors to the chamber, and turn on the fan which pulls fog across the strands.
Reinstalling the standard fog collector at Big Creek Reserve
Amazing view from the Whale Point Cabin and meteorological state at the Landells-Hill Big Creek Reserve. Filmmaker Kyle Baker and team are working on a film called Fog Eaters and getting footage of our research team installing our equipment.
Fog harvesting season has begun
The Fog Squad has set up 2 large fog collectors at the UCSC Farm for the 2023 fog season
Phil Grote is a student working on the fog harvesting project funded by the UCSC CarbonFund.
We are getting real-time fog collection data. This figure shows the mm of water collected over the past week. We had 3 fog events followed by a rain event. All this water is being collected and used to water our plants.
More photos to come!