Fairy Circles are the circular patches of the land barren of plants, varying between 7 and 49 ft in diameter, often encircled by a ring of stimulated growth of grass. Vast carpets of green spinifex grass, pockmarked by barren red circles, are seen in the desert of northwest Australia. Such discs of bare soil also exist 6,000 miles away in Namibia. Two main hypotheses for the cause of these circles are: the work of sand termites, a tug-of-war for water and other scarce nutrients wherein, the landscape self-organizes into the rings of deep-rooted grasses, draining water from a central reservoir where no other plants can thrive.
Fairy Circles
