Taro Katayama and I arrived at Cabrillo National Monument on May 16th, 2022 with the goal of establishing a long-term monitoring program to assess the duration and intensity of fog across the park. Natural resource scientists at the park are interested in understanding the spatial and temporal patterns of fog to 1) better understand if there are any areas that may be suitable for future native revegetation efforts, and 2) to see how fog changes on longer, annual timescales. So in step Taro and I!

We set off fast by constructing stations that were already bought by Dr. Linh Anh Cat at Cabrillo. We had four stations each with three leaf wetness sensors. As explained in earlier blog posts, these leaf wetness sensors mimic the shape of a leaf and measure the electric current across the surface to estimate the amount of water. For two of these four stations we installed Campbell Scientific ClimaVUE weather stations that were bought by Linh Anh. We quickly realized that for our setup to truly work, and be able to differentiate between rain and fog, we needed to know if rain occurred! With the ClimaVUE costing $3k (which would blow our entire budget), we had to be resourceful. We just so happened to find a community of folks online that use an open source software called Weewx. They developed an economical method that uses a combination of raspberry pi’s (tiny computers) programmed with Weewx, a Davis Vantage Pro2 weather station, and a MeteoPi Hat & Connector. Through soldering, coding, resoldering, and more coding, we were able to establish two working weather stations that have their own WiFi networks that park staff can communicate with using their field laptop! To demo how we went around collecting data from the finished stations we prepared a short video for you:

Taro and I also took the opportunity to attend the ESRI User Conference in Downtown San Diego, California. The conference was a week long and included some fascinating talks from researchers, consultants, and ESRI engineers. We also had a chance to network with folks in industry and learn more about the latest gadgets and tech. We were also really stoked to see an awesome NPS virtual experience containing places like Joshua Tree!

Finally, we had a chance to share this important work to friends, family, and park staff in the Naturally Speaking seminar series. This was a great opportunity for us to practice communicating science to the general public, and also to share knowledge of this project to park volunteers to promote sharing knowledge of fog to future park visitors.

That’s all I have for you! This has been such a fantastic summer full of great memories. I can’t say thank you enough to all of the park staff for everything they do (especially Lauren Pandori and Linh Anh Cat!). Finally, special shout out to Taro. This was such a massive, difficult project and could not have been possible without your knowledge and great attitude. I’ve enjoyed bouncing around ideas together and I hope we get to work together again on another hydrology project in the future!

Hi there! My name is Brent Wilder and I’m a PhD student in the Department of Geosciences at Boise State University where I focus on quantifying changes to seasonal snowpack due to anthropogenic global warming and disturbances such as severe, high elevation wildfires in forested ecosystems. In my research, I use a combination of airborne/helicopter lidar, physics-based modeling, and field spectroscopy to answer research questions relevant to downstream communities and ecosystems. As a Scientist in Parks Fellow at the Cabrillo National Monument, I will be focusing on a totally different form of precipitation – fog! Nestled at the end of the Point Loma peninsula in San Diego, the park is home to several endemic, drought-deciduous plant species that when blooming, make for an absolutely beautiful view. Researchers at the park are interested in installing weather cameras, meteorological stations, and leaf wetness sensors to get a better idea of the role fog plays in plant phenology, especially during the warm spring and summer months when rainfall is sparse. This research will help promote climate adaption strategies at the park by hopefully identifying microrefugia at the park that could be conducive for future native revegetation efforts.

Taro Katayama and I arrived at Cabrillo on May 16^th, 2022, with the goal of doing just that! During the first month of my internship we have had the opportunity to work with a lot of different folks at the park to learn about the work being done at Cabrillo. For example, we participated in a Weed Warriors event by the Tide Pools where we learned about the non-native, invasive plants around the park and efforts to mitigate the spread. We also learned about some of the rare, native plants at the park such as Cliff Spurge at the NPS greenhouse. It is our hope that the fog monitoring stations will identify the best spots on the peninsula to replant this one when the time is right. One potential microrefugia is a site we have named “Event Bluff” (coincidently named after the Event Bluff it sits adjacent to). Our supervisor informed us that fog can sometimes be seen funneling up this steep slope upwards. We also used high resolution lidar elevation datasets provided from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to assess covariates such as elevation, slope, slope position, and aspect to inform decision making for our other sites. We constructed a total of four weather stations, each equipped with three leaf wetness sensors. Each of these sensors will measure even the smallest amount of moisture deposited by rain or fog. In the coming weeks we will be installing the stations, along with two trail cameras that will capture time-lapse of fog occurrence for further data validation.

Stay tuned for our next update in July!