Presence and importance of fog in forest ecosystems of a protected fo...

Recent studies in south Tyrol (Alpine region) confirmed that these ecosystems are influenced by convective clouds appearing over mountain peaks in the summer, and thermal inversions, leading to higher fog occurrence in valleys, in the winter. This is relevant because fog provides additional moisture to the ecosystem as well as influence other water components of the water balance like for example evaporation, transpiration and amount of throughfall. It is known that there are high variations in cloudiness at small scales, therefore affecting the estimation of evaporation fluxes, which include large uncertainties, difficult to assess and interpret. The frequency of fog has been recently quantified by analyzing digital cameras but nothing is known about the amount of water being provided by fog to the ecosystem as throughfall or transpired during fog days. We present a first estimation of the water partition and balance of an alpine forest ecosystem.