Researchers get to the bottom of fairy circles

Friday, February 22, 2019 - 09:50 in Earth & Climate

Fairy circles are round gaps in arid grassland that are distributed very uniformly over the landscape and only occur along the Namib Desert in southern Africa and in parts of Australia. Various theories circulate about the actual cause of these unusual spatial patterns, ranging from poisonous Euphorbia plants or rising gases, to ants, termites or plant competition for sparse water resources. Scientists from the University of Göttingen, Australia and Israel have now got to the bottom of their cause with soil investigations and drones. The results suggest that the fairy circles in Australia were caused by processes such as the weathering of the soil by heavy rainfall, extreme heat and evaporation. The extensive data collected by the researchers argued against a causal relationship to underground termite structures.

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