Quantifying the micrometorological controls on fog deposition

Abstract:

Fog deposition has been shown to be a significant water input into many arid ecosystems. However, deposition of fog onto foliage depends on many factors. Previously, characterizing fog droplet size distributions was labor intensive, but currently we can characterize changes in fog droplet composition in the 2-50 µm in 2 µm intervals in real time. Evaluating how droplet size and ambient micrometeorological conditions affect deposition rates will allowing tremendous new insight into fog formation and deposition processes. Previous work has characterized fog deposition as it alters with wind speed in natural systems, but extensively testing how droplet size, wind speed, angle of interception all co-vary would be impossible in a natural setting. We utilized a wind tunnel with artificial fog generating nebulizers to simulate fog events across micrometeorological conditions. Using a weighing lysimeter, we were able to quantify the differential rates of deposition on different theoretical leaf types as droplet size and micrometeorological conditions vary. We hope to inform fog collector designs with this information to ensure we are accurately quantifying the fluxes of fog-derived water into these systems.