Fairy Circles Discovered in the Australian Outback
Fairy Circles Discovered in the Australian Outback
March 15, 2016
Christian Science Monitor — “Fairy circles,” the distinctive bald spots dotting the Namibian grasslands, were once mysterious not only for their striking patterns, but their exclusivity. No other landscape in the world seemed to have the same six-sided honeycombs.
But more than 6,200 miles away, a new discovery in the Australian outback has helped researchers crack the code, supporting the theory that sparse grasses actually organize themselves into the unusual structures to deal with their dry environment.
A large fairy circle in Australia
(Photo: Dr. Stephan Getzin)
The research team including Dr. Hezi Yizhaq and Prof. Ehud Meron, of BGU’s Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, and scientists from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig, Germany were tipped off by aerial photos taken near Newman, Australia.
The photos showed regularly patterned barren patches that resembled those seen in southern Africa, in similar transitional landscapes where desert and grasslands meet. To confirm that the vegetation patches were the same type found in Namibia, the researchers used aerial photos, pattern analysis and mathematical modeling.
“The interesting thing about fairy circles is that they are spread with great regularity and homogeneity, even over vast areas, but they occur only within a narrow rainfall belt,” says UFZ researcher Dr. Stephan Getzin, the lead author of study that was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Read more on the Christian Science Monitor website >>
Stories Like This
