This 1996 documentary show the fog collection process and
an installation project in Ecuador.
Category Archives: Latest News
FogQuest Plans and Operations Moving Forward
FogQuest has been in operation as a small, all-volunteer, charity since the year 2000. After 23 years of initiating and carrying out fog collection field projects, training groups and individuals on site evaluation and operation of fog projects, plus providing guidance through correspondence and personal interactions, we have decided that it is necessary to change our direction somewhat.
In part because of the complications brought on by the COVID pandemic and the resulting travel chaos, we have decided to no longer actively undertake field projects. Our focus will move to providing mentoring and assistance to individuals and groups wishing to initiate new projects or revive old projects. We will do this by continuing our responses to queries that come in on an almost daily basis and through the provision of materials on our website. This includes the 160-page FogQuest Manual, which has about 300 colour illustrations, and provides extensive background on both fog and fog collection. Other features on our website will be updated in the coming months and you can access information through the FAQ section and, soon, a totally new Library section.
We thank all of our supporters for their continuing help and appreciate everyone who is fascinated by the possibilities of fog collection.
9th International Conference of Fog, Fog Collection, and Dew
Fort Collins, Colorado, USA, 23 – 28 July, 2023
Details about the conference are linked here. The conference series, is now conducted under the auspices of the International Fog and Dew Association (IFDA). It aims to foster exchange and cross-fertilization of ideas on topics related to fog, fog collection and dew.
Dr. Jeff Collett, the conference chair writes: The conference had 134 registered attendees from 27 countries and many additional guests. More than 40 of the conference participants were students – a great turnout and a positive sign for the future of the field. Funding from NSF helped bring 14 students to the conference. The conference followed the tradition set in the first conference in the series, with a midweek excursion, and an evening banquet with live music as highlights of the week. The excursion to Rocky Mountain National Park went well and featured beautiful scenery, some wildlife sightings, a mountain thunderstorm with graupel, and good conversation. The banquet was set in a wonderful space high in the CSU football stadium with one side overlooking the field and the other facing the mountains.
The next conference will be held in 2026 at a time and location to be announced.
New FogQuest Library Available on Our Website
The new FogQuest Library section is now available on our website. This is a unique contribution to accessing a wide range of papers and documents that have been published related to fog collection. There are presently about 400 scanned journal papers, theses, reports, and documents in the library. Each document can be downloaded. Many of these are very difficult to find elsewhere. They may be from old publications dating back to as far as the 1800s, or from obscure field reports, or publications in languages other than English. Currently, papers are divided into those relevant to 27 countries as well as 8 other categories.
We do not endorse the statements in each document or the conclusions reached by the authors. Visitors to this site should make their own critical examination of the results and conclusions. This is especially true of non-peer-reviewed documents such as theses and institutional reports.
This is not a collection of recent publications on fog and fog collection. Recent publications can be accessed through the journals directly or from science aggregating sites.
Access to the library requires payment of a small sum to FogQuest, as a one-year membership cost, which allows unlimited downloads of the publications. The goal is to provide reference material to individuals in the form of a library, not to make the publications freely available on the Internet. The fees are used to support the operation of our charity.
Copyright Notice
Some of the papers presented in the library have a copyright restriction on their use. They are made available for your own personal research purposes. They may not be copied for commercial purposes and may not be inserted, in whole or in part, into other documents without the permission of the copyright holder. Reference to the ideas of the authors of the papers should be properly cited in your publications.
Requests from Students for Project Assistance
This time of the year we are pleased to see a great number of projects on fog collection being undertaken by university and high school students throughout the world. This new generation of young people will be the engineers, scientists, and development experts of the future.
We do our best to answer all requests for help that come in through our contact email address; however, please be patient as our charity is operated by volunteers and it takes some time to deal with the incoming messages.
New video update from Guatemala
Here’s a new video showing our project work in Tojquia, Guatemala.
New Tojquia project completed
The project mentioned in our last newsletter – the construction of a double panel large fog collector and the renovation of an adjacent greenhouse in Tojquia, Guatemala, has now been completed. FogQuest volunteers Pablo Osses and Tony Makepeace helped guide the volunteer effort of the townspeople who constructed the project in late January.
FogQuest has been working with the people in the village of Tojquia, in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, since 2006. It is an ongoing project to utilize large fog collectors to provide water for the needs of the people on their farms during the dry winter season. Together we have constructed 40 large fog collectors along with the installation of plastic water tanks to store the water. This has been a very successful project and a demonstration of the long-term viability of fog collection projects when they are conducted with the cooperation of the villagers. These fog collectors provide about 8000 L per day of fog water to the families during the winter season when rain is largely absent.
The collectors and the greenhouse are located next to the local schoolhouse. The water supply from the new fog collectors will be used to irrigate a vegetable garden in the renovated greenhouse as well as supply the water needs of the school. The schoolteacher and students assisted in the completion of the project.
We thank the Cloud Appreciation Society for their support of this project, as well as Rotary International. The Guatemalan firm TOCOSA provided valuable assistance with supplies and logistics. We also thank our our donors and members for their continued support.
Project expansion complete in Tojquia
Here’s a gallery of the new and completed fog collectors recently installed as a project expansion in Tojquia, Guatemala. Thanks to Nicolas Zanetta for these images.
New Source for Mesh and Standard Fog Collectors – April 2018
FogQuest receives a constant flow of requests for mesh and for complete fog collectors. We assist individuals and other groups that are starting evaluations of fog collection at sites by selling small to moderate amounts of mesh. We encourage everyone to build their own small Standard Fog Collectors as this is a good learning process for anyone truly interested in fog collection. There is information in our FogQuest manual on how to do this. Also, even shipping the small one square meter SFC is expensive and it is impossible to do so with the 40 square meter Large Fog Collectors.
One of our members, Prof. Daniel Fernandez, at California State University, Monterey Bay, has now started a new business to provide a source of the same Marienberg Raschel mesh that FogQuest uses in its fog collectors. His company Bayside Fog Collectors will also sell assembled SFCs. The primary market is people in California. This is an alternative source of mesh and assembled SFCs that some of you may wish to consider. The company website and a contact email address are given here.
8th International Conference on Fog, Fog Collection and Dew 14 through 19 July, 2019, in Taipei, Taiwan
A new notice has come out regarding the 8th conference in the series that began in Vancouver, Canada in 1998. Information will be added to our conference page as it becomes available. Information from the first announcement is given in the paragraph below. We encourage everyone to consider attending.
The conference is the premier international gathering of fog and dew researchers from around the world. The ongoing series provides a dynamic forum for the exchange of ideas and the latest research findings from scientists worldwide interested in the life cycle of fog and dew at the interface between surface, vegetation and the atmosphere, and in the collection of fog and dew for freshwater production. Its interdisciplinary character gives this conference series a unique character at the crossroads between fog and dew physics and chemistry and their interactions with and impacts on vegetation, materials, and human activities. The conference features in-situ and remote sensing observations of fog and dew properties, high-resolution and numerical weather prediction modeling, equipment design for fog and dew collection, studies of water collection and use from fog and dew in arid environments, and examination of ecosystem interactions and impacts. The conference’s one-week format, gathering about 200 people, allows for ample plenary oral sessions and several long poster sessions conducive to in-depth scientific exchange. An exciting social program that provides opportunities to foster new collaborations boosts this scientific networking forum.