The **Atacama Desert**, not only is the driest on the planet, but due to **climate change** it is expanding towards the south of Chile. Its natural border is the north of the Coquimbo region, but **the most severe drought in the country’s history** threatens to turn it into a desert area.
In this complex scenario, and although few are aware of this fact, the **fog harvesting system** is applied in the area, which is a process through which water is extracted from this **meteorological phenomenon** through a condensation and collection procedure.
## Harvesting fog
Few places on the planet are more hostile to life than the Atacama Desert. Like two great walls, the Andes and a mountain range next to the **Pacific Ocean** enclose the desert and ‘steal’ its clouds. To the point that in many **areas of Atacama** not a single drop of rain falls for centuries.
However, a Chilean scientist invented a **method to drain those trapped clouds** by the mountains that do not reach the desert. This development went down in history as ‘fog catcher’. Similar devices are also used in Morocco, Spain, or Nepal. A Martian refuge in northern Chile hosts the most advanced research to **harvest clouds**. The Atacama UC Station is where the fog is deciphered.
## The challenge of catching fog
60 years ago, the Chilean scientist Carlos Espinosa created the first fog collector model to **combat water scarcity** in the city of Antofagasta. This first fog catcher opened a new line of research to understand and take advantage of this mist.
The technology proved its effectiveness in 1987 in the community of Tofo-Chungungo, where a project of 100 fog catchers supplied more than 90 households for ten years.
Its operation is simple. The fog catcher mesh intercepts the cloud and **captures the water droplets** pushed by the wind. The water settles by gravity and is stored in a tank. For the system to work, only fog and wind are needed.
“We have kept the fog catcher simple, with a certain dose of technology in the **mesh and gutter configuration**. It is made of materials available anywhere in the world, and the mesh is easy to ship,” explains Pablo Osses to SINC, a professor at the Institute of Geography of the Catholic University and director of the Atacama UC Station.
## An oasis for science
In this sector of **northern Chile**, an hour from the city of Iquique, the Coastal Range could be understood as a brutal cliff that overlooks the continent to the beach. Perched on its more than 800 meters of unevenness is the Atacama UC Station.
Since 1997, in this infrastructure attached to the UC Atacama Desert Center and the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, the fog oasis that is generated every morning is studied when the stratocumulus clouds coming from the Pacific collide with the hill. With just eight meters long, its fog catcher can reach **produce about 1,000 liters of water daily**.
“Here we approach the fog from different perspectives: satellite image, fog modeling, associated ecosystems, corrosion engineering, solar energy, architecture of extreme places, **fog water agriculture…** The number of disciplines converging in this place has been expanding,” says Osses.
This particular type of fog is common along more than 2,500 km of the central-northern coast of Chile. And thanks to the existence of the Coastal Range, it is also harvestable.
“One of the big problems we have had with **fog catchers in Chile** is that, before installing them, we need to know where to do it. If they are placed in the wrong place, we will have bad results and it will seem like the technology does not work,” explains Felipe Lobos Roco, a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.
To solve this problem, the UC Atacama Desert Center has led the creation of a **Fog Water Map**. It is based on the AMARU model –water snake in Quechua– promoted by Professor Lobos and which uses data from the 25 stations of the Chile Fog Water Monitoring Network.
“The map will be available at the end of May on an interactive website for consultants, decision-makers, and water users. It shows the places and times of the year when **fog water can be collected** on the Chilean coast, allowing feasibility assessments of this water for future collection projects,” explains Lobos, the model’s lead author, to SINC.
## Fog for more sustainable cities
Another researcher associated with the Fog Water Monitoring Network, Professor Virginia Carter of the Mayor University, studies the **collection potential** in the city of Alto Hospicio.
“Our next publication shows the first evaluation of the water potential of fog in a city. This water has the potential to serve as an alternative source for the **population without access to drinking water** and must be recognized within Chile’s water policies,” says Carter.
The expert has recently been awarded a NatGeo Explorers grant to study the role of fog in the **conservation of ecosystems and as a complementary water resource** in water-scarce areas. In this project, Camilo del Río, director of the UC Atacama Desert Center, and Felipe Lobos also participate.
**Fog water harvesting** is not a modern solution. Geographer Pilar Cereceda recalled in the Fog Water monograph that the garoe tree was already used in the Canary Islands in the 16th century to collect it, and that in Oman olives were still being used for the same purpose in 1990.
Among the **cliffs of Alto Patache**, there are still vestiges of the pre-Hispanic culture of the changos, presumed mist drinkers. Numerous fragments of ancient ceramics and shells recall that these guanaco hunter-gatherers used the rock formations –and possibly the leather of their prey– to **decant the fog and quench their thirst**, as archaeologist Horacio Larraín investigated. It must not be a coincidence that, in the same place, science tries to decipher the fog to quench the world’s thirst.
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