Wednesday, 27 February 2013

Where are they now?

Hola amigos! Sorry for the very delayed post- the post-Peru trip work has been hectic both in Sydney and Lima. On our end we've been continuing experiments in the fog room, writing up the thesis report, making a (prize-winning!) poster and presenting our work to the sponsors.

But the real fun's been continuing in Flor de Amancaes! Below are a few snapshots of the fog collection project and how it's progressed since July 2012!










Above: Shots of the hill in September 2012 after plenty of fog - so green! Luis was still taking measurements and sending us data every week or so. The water quality was actually pretty good once the dirt had been settled out!



In October, the PEBAL + the locals put up their very own large fog collector! It measures 3m x 10m and in its first week captured 450 L of fresh water. This water was used for washing clothes and watering plants :-) 




We'd never actually met these two guys, but they helped put up the large fog collector (and look a bit chuffed about it!) and how green are those hills now!!

If you remember way back to the start of the blog, the whole point of setting up our little baby pilot fog collectors was to see if it was worth putting up a big one, and if it was actually feasible to do so, with the aim of actually implementing a large scale project in the next few years. Only 3 months later however, PEBAL and the community thought they were working so well they put up their own large one!! What a fantastic outcome!
It was left up for a few months but was taken down in January to avoid heat/sun/ dirt damage. They put up this sign to keep everyone in the loop about it:


The hills are back to being dry and dirty, and looks like our pilot screens are doing a good job of collecting the dust!

"Fog collecting system panels under maintenance" - 23 January 2013
So there you go! Thanks for joining us on this crazy adventure :-)