Fog Harp Improvement Project
This project began in Spring of 2022 and stretched into the summer. We partnered with UC Santa Barbara's Smithsonian Scholars Program and delivered a final recommendations report detailing our proposed fog harp design.
On the Channel Island as in many parts of Mediterranean California, the water budget available to plants and animals can be only properly understood when fog is considered as a major water resource; however, measuring the water content in fog at weather stations is still a major challenge. Even though fog is measured by many commercially available weather stations, customers are usually concerned with visibility e.g., for navigation and aviation and less with actual water content.
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Photo: Our initial fog harp design, based on the harp previously used by UC Santa Barbara.
Understanding how much of the water budget consists of fog deposited water, and how fog patterns are changing with climate change is vital to our efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. Measuring precipitation alone does not give us a complete picture, especially for fog dependent habitats such as the Bishop Pine forests on Santa Cruz Island.
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Photo: Our second model, this time utilizing mesh as the condensation site.
Photo: two months worth of water collected by out mesh prototype
One of the current methods used to measure water content in fog is a fog harp, which consists of an array of strings in which water condenses and drips to a measuring unit.
The CP WaterWorks Team was tasked with improving a current fog harp design used in Santa Cruz Island, Ca. The goal was an robust, field-worthy, fog capture device able to withstand high wind (60+ mph) marine environments.
The team chose to explore a variety of designs, including a more traditional fog net alongside and improved fog harp. These devices were deployed in the Kenneth S. Norris Rancho Marino Reserve in Cambria, CA to test their fog capture potential before selecting a final design.
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Photo: The second iteration of our harp design.
