Washington, July 10 : Two German scientists are working with new settlements on the outskirts of Lima in Peru to set up special fog-collecting nets that gather hundreds of gallons of water a day, which would help bring water to parched villages.

According to a report in National Geographic magazine, the scientists in question are German conservationists and biologists Kai Tiedemann and Anne Lummerich, who run Alimon, a small nonprofit that supports Latin American development.

Since 2006, they've been working with new settlements on the outskirts of Lima to set up special nets that scoop water directly from the air.

Rain rarely falls on these dry hills. The annual precipitation in Lima is about half an inch (1.5 centimeters), and the city gets its water from far-off Andean lakes.

But every winter, from June to November, dense fog sweeps in from the Pacific Ocean.

With a few thousand dollars and some volunteer labor, a village can set up fog-collecting nets that gather hundreds of gallons of water a day, without a single drop of rain falling.

As far back as 2,000 years ago, desert villages and other rain-starved communities around the world may have started harvesting fog that collected as water and dripped from trees, according to Robert Schemenauer, executive director of FogQuest, a Canadian nonprofit organization that helps communities set up simple collection devices.

Serious work on collecting fog started about a hundred years ago. Since then, fog catchers have been used successfully, though on a small scale, all over the world.

In small communities that can't get water from wells, rain, or a river, the technique can be a lifesaver, freeing poor people from exorbitant water prices.

That's exactly what's starting to happen in Peru.

Lummerich and Tiedemann based their fog collectors on a design Schemenauer developed with Chilean researchers for villages in Chile in the 1980s.

They searched for the right place to carry out their project, and found that place on the steep slopes around Lima.

"It's amazing when you're up there and it''s foggy and the wind comes in. Then, you hear all the water start running into the reservoir. It's like opening a tap," Lummerich said.

She and Tiedemann also designed another fog collector, with multiple layers of netting to better catch a shifting wind, which they erected in 2007.

The new design has collected more than 600 gallons (2,271 liters) in a day without taking up any more space than the original nets. (ANI)