Great project!! But, isn’t it more sustainable planting a mist collecting forest? --> Fog - collecting nets require constant manpower in terms of maintenance. Also, those expensive nets are made of plastic and after 10 years they are trash. What do you think about planting forests that are specialized for catching humidity from the air? The coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and especially the Pinus canariensis have evolved very long needles specifically to harvest fog. Within a few years, a population of Pinus canar. can be established that collects many times more water than the nets due to the much bigger surface of the millions of needles of a tree compared to the net. The tree grows in a wide range of climatic conditions, it can survive drought, heat and frost. After 25 years the forest starts to produce timber and fuel-wood for local economy. According to German Wikipedia the grown up Pinus canar. harvests on a foggy day 50 l/m² DAILY on average and only needs 1/3 of it. On a km² (~35.000 trees needed), that’s about ~30.000m³ of water going into the ground watershed DAILY. There you can get it by groundwater through aquifier wells or Qanat. I found also a lot of more info in “Plants at the Margin: Ecological Limits and Climate Change”: Even a Nine years old Pinus Canar. Forest is able to harvest 500mm/m² a year throughfall out of the fog in northern Canary. Mostly of it goes in the ground. Problems with raising up the baby trees in the first years? Then the wonderful Groasis Growboxx guarantees a 95% chance even in harsh conditions. It costs only about $1.2 per tree. th-cam.com/video/jvc1Wm9KKro/w-d-xo.html Beside that there are some other trees able to catch fog in bigger amounts: "Acacia macracantha" and Casuarina. Between the trees you could plant the bushes "Eugenia" and "caesalpinia tinctoria". They are fast growing and good for animal feeding. AND then there is the Namib desert grass "Stipagrostis sabulicola". It's able to irrigate itself with fog water and a full grown plant puts about 4l/day to the ground in the hotter Namib. This grass is a perfect material for Permaculture Greening and even building Material. There are also some good working endemic plants in the Atacama. This tree/bush planting combining with some earth works to prevent the desert loosing all the rain water through flash floods is a thing that can change a lot: th-cam.com/video/C1_ImV8U6Lk/w-d-xo.html MUST SEE: th-cam.com/video/K1rKDXuZ8C0/w-d-xo.html And in the long term this planting binds a huge amount of CO2. --> These are just informations i collected in the internet collateral to the permaculture research for a garden project. No personal experience. Hopefully they can trigger some ideas.
I love your enthusiasm for this. You should get yourself involved in a project! This doc is more than 20 yrs old, so I'm sure the technology has advanced.
@@JourneysLaurenMillar :-). No time, money and scientific background to run such a project. The cloud harvesting technology has evolved - i think the "cloudfisher" is the best commerical available system. But still, it's expensive. As far as i remember, 1000l of not mineralized water (1m³) costs about 5$ (lifetime costs) on a good place.
Its really amazing and innovative work. Thank you for delivering this experience to the world.
Our pleasure!
Great project!! But, isn’t it more sustainable planting a mist collecting forest? -->
Fog - collecting nets require constant manpower in terms of maintenance. Also, those expensive nets are made of plastic and after 10 years they are trash.
What do you think about planting forests that are specialized for catching humidity from the air?
The coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and especially the Pinus canariensis have evolved very long needles specifically to harvest fog. Within a few years, a population of Pinus canar. can be established that collects many times more water than the nets due to the much bigger surface of the millions of needles of a tree compared to the net.
The tree grows in a wide range of climatic conditions, it can survive drought, heat and frost. After 25 years the forest starts to produce timber and fuel-wood for local economy.
According to German Wikipedia the grown up Pinus canar. harvests on a foggy day 50 l/m² DAILY on average and only needs 1/3 of it. On a km² (~35.000 trees needed), that’s about ~30.000m³ of water going into the ground watershed DAILY. There you can get it by groundwater through aquifier wells or Qanat.
I found also a lot of more info in “Plants at the Margin: Ecological Limits and Climate Change”: Even a Nine years old Pinus Canar. Forest is able to harvest 500mm/m² a year throughfall out of the fog in northern Canary. Mostly of it goes in the ground.
Problems with raising up the baby trees in the first years? Then the wonderful Groasis Growboxx guarantees a 95% chance even in harsh conditions. It costs only about $1.2 per tree.
th-cam.com/video/jvc1Wm9KKro/w-d-xo.html
Beside that there are some other trees able to catch fog in bigger amounts: "Acacia macracantha" and Casuarina. Between the trees you could plant the bushes "Eugenia" and "caesalpinia tinctoria". They are fast growing and good for animal feeding. AND then there is the Namib desert grass "Stipagrostis sabulicola". It's able to irrigate itself with fog water and a full grown plant puts about 4l/day to the ground in the hotter Namib. This grass is a perfect material for Permaculture Greening and even building Material. There are also some good working endemic plants in the Atacama.
This tree/bush planting combining with some earth works to prevent the desert loosing all the rain water through flash floods is a thing that can change a lot:
th-cam.com/video/C1_ImV8U6Lk/w-d-xo.html
MUST SEE: th-cam.com/video/K1rKDXuZ8C0/w-d-xo.html
And in the long term this planting binds a huge amount of CO2.
--> These are just informations i collected in the internet collateral to the permaculture research for a garden project. No personal experience. Hopefully they can trigger some ideas.
I love your enthusiasm for this. You should get yourself involved in a project! This doc is more than 20 yrs old, so I'm sure the technology has advanced.
@@JourneysLaurenMillar :-). No time, money and scientific background to run such a project. The cloud harvesting technology has evolved - i think the "cloudfisher" is the best commerical available system. But still, it's expensive. As far as i remember, 1000l of not mineralized water (1m³) costs about 5$ (lifetime costs) on a good place.