Fog as unconventional water resource: mapping fog occurrence and fog collection potential for food security in Southern Bolivia

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2022.104884. This is version 2 of this Preprint.

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Authors

Giulio Castelli, Aida Cuni Sanchez, Aixa Mestrallet, Limber Cruz Montano, Teresa Lopez de Armentia, Fabio Salbitano, Elena Bresci

Abstract

“Valles Cruceños” rural region, Bolivia, is characterized by an intrinsic water scarcity and an increasing pressure for food production by the neighboring and fast-sprawling city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Here, orographic fog is a daily phenomenon occurring all the year round, representing a sustainable water source for improving farmers’ resilience to dry spells and for promoting food security and sovereignty. With the present study, we aim at a first assessment of the potential of fog collection in the area by a 1-year experimental analysis made through 1-m2 fog collectors in 10 different locations. Starting from these data, we design under safe assumption (including a sensitivity analysis) a fog water irrigation system providing water for a standard theoretical field with four local crops (maize, green beans, potato, and tomato) in the dry season. The present paper represents the first study on fog collection in Bolivia, showing that, on annual basis, an average of 6.01 l/m2/d can be obtained from most productive areas, with peaks up to 8.93 l/m2/d. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, the work represents one of the first consistent studies on the productive use of orographic fog, while large part of the literature focuses on advection fog, mostly occurring in the Pacific Coast of South America.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31223/X5F340

Subjects

Engineering, Life Sciences

Keywords

water scarcity, fog harvesting, irrigation, rural water supply, South America, Andes

Dates

Published: 2022-08-21 22:50

Last Updated: 2022-08-22 05:49

License

CC BY Attribution 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Conflict of interest statement:
No conflicts of interest