FOG: A WATER RESOURCE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARID REGIONS; Proceedings of the Fifth Joint Conference on Agriculture, Food, and the Environment, June 17-18, 1996, Padova, Italy

The Pacific coastline from Peru to Northern Chile is one of the most arid regions in the world, with little rainfall, but considerable amounts of fog produced by the advection of marine clouds towards the continent. This paper describes a project, recently funded by the European Commission, whose objective is to set up a basic plan of sustainable use for the natural resources of the Peruvian coastal desert using collected fog as the only water resource. This plan will be based on the results of a pilot experiment, which is being carried out on the coastal hills of Southern Peru, aimed at verifying the following assumptions: the effectiveness of artificially collected fog water in the restoration of the vegetation in an environment which is undergoing a process of rapid desertification; the ability of plants to sustain themselves by means of the water supply derived from the fog they collect, and with no more need for man made collectors; the possibility that the surplus of water obtained by means of artificial collectors can be used for subsistence agriculture and for pasture growth.