Battling ‘thirsty’ air

RESEARCH: SPRAYING TREETOPS SHOWS THEIR CHANCE OF SURVIVAL

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In a Swiss pine forest, the treetops are being sprayed with mist in a bid to discover the effect that drier or wetter air has on their ability to survive.

A total of 18 scaffolding towers have been erected between the trees in the Pfynwald in Switzerland's southern Wallis region. High-pressure nozzles mounted on the towers spray vapour over the canopy of about 60 Scots pines, some standing 15m tall.

The study is a unique experiment designed to separate out and analyse the different effects of soil drought and air dryness in a natural forest ecosystem.

"The goal is not to spray forests to save them, but to understand why a lack of water in the atmosphere has such a significant impact on forests," project director Charlotte Grossiord said.

The trial is being conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL).