Potencial de la captura de niebla para uso doméstico rural y riego durante la época seca del año en la isla San Cristóbal, Galápagos, Ecuador

Abstract

The Galápagos Archipelago is a semiarid zone with scarce superficial water sources. Due to its geographic location and oceanic currents these islands are covered of fog during seven months along the year, this may be used as a potential source of water supply. In this study the feasibility of fog collection for rural use and irrigation was investigated by using two Standard Fog Collectors (SFC) of 1 m2 and a cylindrical fog net of 0.15 m2 at 600 m of elevation in San Cristóbal Island. The method consists in a trigonometric model to estimate the amount of water from fog using climatic variables. Only agriculture was taken into account because it corresponds to 99.6% of the total water demand. A hydrologic balance was carried out and a system of SFC of mesh of 35% shade coefficient was estimated at different elevations to cover the 25% and a 15% of the water deficit in an average year and in a dry year, respectively.