We explore the use of ground-based surface brightness fluctuation ( SBF ) measurements to constrain distances to nearby dwarf galaxies .
Using archival CFHT Megacam imaging data for a sample of 27 nearby dwarfs , we demonstrate that reliable SBF measurements and distances accurate to 15 % are possible even for very low surface brightness ( LSB , \mu _ { i 0 } > 24 mag/arcsec ^ { 2 } ) galaxies with modest , \sim hour-long exposures with CFHT .
Combining our sample with a recent sample of 7 dwarfs with SBF measured with HST from the literature , we provide the most robust empirical SBF calibration to-date for the blue colors expected for these low mass systems .
Our calibration is credible over the color range 0.3 \lesssim g - i \lesssim 0.8 mag .
It is also the first SBF calibration tied completely to TRGB distances as each galaxy in the sample has a literature TRGB distance .
We find that even though the intrinsic scatter in SBF increases for blue galaxies , the rms scatter in the calibration is still \lesssim 0.3 mag .
We verify our measurements by comparing with HST SBF measurements and detailed image simulations .
We argue that ground-based SBF is a very useful tool for characterizing dwarf satellite systems and field dwarfs in the nearby , D \lesssim 20 Mpc universe .