27/08/14

The foggy future of fresh water in Chile

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In Chile, fog is called camanchaca, which means ‘darkness’ in the Aymara indigenous language. But — contrary to this ominous sounding moniker — camanchaca is promising a bright future for parts of Chile. As SciDev.Net explained in a recent feature, harvesting moisture from fog can provide much needed water in arid and semi-arid places, including Chile’s Atacama desert and its dry northern areas. In these places, scientists are working for reducing the costs of fog catching technology for making it a competitive source of fresh water. 
 
This photo gallery tells the story of how researchers are conducting experiments to develop new fog catching technology and sensors designed to find the best locations for it.