Cloud Water Interception – Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research

This project is part of theme 3 which is focused on the ecohydrology of change. Cloud water interception (CWI), the direct interception of water droplets in fog by vegetation, has been shown to contribute 20-30% of total precipitation in Hawaiʻi. Quantifying CWI at spatial scales large enough to answer ecological and hydrological questions is a major challenge because it is highly variable in space and time, controlled by multiple factors, and difficult to measure directly. CWI remains the most important unknown term in the hydrological cycle for Hawaiʻi. The objectives of this research project are to identify how CWI is distributed over the Hawai’ian Islands in response to changing climate and vegetation and generate input data for the CWI model by first quantifying liquid water content and wind speed, and then characterizing vegetation structure to make CWI estimates.