Posted on 09/26/2023 7:11:56 AM PDT by Red Badger
Mysterious, bare patches of ground that polka-dot the deserts of Namibia and Australia are far more widespread than we knew.
They're known as fairy circles, and a new global assessment has counted 263 sites where these bald spots can be found, spread across three continents and 15 countries, including Sahel, Madagascar, and Middle-West Asia. This new information could help scientists figure out what causes them, a question that is proving surprisingly tricky to answer.
"We conducted a global and systematic assessment of fairy circle-like vegetation patterns and discovered hundreds of [fairy-circle]-like locations on three continents," write a team led by environmental scientist Emilio Guirado of the University of Alicante in Spain.
"Our study provides insights into the ecology and biogeography of these fascinating vegetation patterns and the first atlas of their global distribution."
VIDEO AT LINK..............
Fairy circles are a true ecological mystery. They appear in desert regions as circular, barren 'pavements' in low grassy vegetation that otherwise covers the ground – patches of dry, naked earth, up to around 12 meters (39 feet) in diameter, and almost always separated spatially – not touching or overlapping.
Scientists were only faniliar with examples in Namibia until 2014, when they were recorded pocking the Pilbara desert of Western Australia. But we still don't know with certainty what causes them. The termite interpretation has been argued extensively, but more recent research – and much, much older knowledge – suggests that the tiny insects could be playing a role.
The idea that the circles help the vegetation maximize sparse water resources has been gaining traction. But the countries' two landscapes drain differently, which complicates things. The notion that other plant species might be leaving behind toxins was considered for a while; that was ruled out in 2021.
Part of the problem is that these circles are found in parts of the world that are highly inhospitable and difficult to get to. A lot of research relies on drone and satellite imagery. But this, Guirado and his team realized, was a more powerful tool than we knew. Because if we can find more landscapes in which these strange formations can be found, we can look for what makes them similar, rather than focusing just on the differences.
They undertook a systematic survey using very high resolution satellite imagery, and used machine learning to analyse the results, to carefully study 574,799 hectare-sized plots of land around the world. This painstaking analysis rewarded the scientists with a vastly expanded atlas of fairy circle sites.
"Our analyses revealed 263 locations with [fairy-circle]-like vegetation patterns distributed across drylands worldwide," they write.
"These include those already identified in Namibia and Western Australia, as well as areas never described before, including the Sahel, Western Sahara, Horn of Africa, Madagascar, Southwest Asia, or Central and Southwest Australia. By doing so, our study provides a global atlas of areas showing FC-like vegetation patterns and expands the known existence of this vegetation type to new countries and continents."
A map revealing the locations of the new fairy circle sites (yellow). The previously recorded sites are shown in pink. (Guirado et al., PNAS, 2023)
This information, the researchers say, will help narrow down what causes them. This is because they were able to identify specific features common to all the sites in which the fairy circles can be found. These include a very dry, arid, desert environment; high temperatures and high precipitation seasonality; and soil with very low nutrients, and a high sand content.
Interestingly, the team also found that areas with fairy rings show more stable vegetation productivity over time than surrounding areas without fairy rings. Their findings, Guirado and his colleagues say, can help identify region-specific reasons why fairy circles might emerge.
"The global atlas introduced here advances our understanding of the biogeography of fairy circle-like vegetation patterns and will facilitate conducting future research about the characteristics and mechanisms underlying these enigmatic vegetation patterns in locations never studied so far," they write.
"Our work also paves the way for further research on the functional implications of these vegetation structures, which make ecosystems more stable and may help them to avoid tipping points associated with climate change."
The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Yeah, I have fairy circles in my yard where grass refuses to grow.
Mole crickets?....................
Interesting.
Root fungus remnants.
Articles from N. Carolina, Wyoming and other states, which have them, too.
https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/open-spaces/2021-03-12/the-science-and-magic-of-wyomings-fairy-rings
&
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Fairy-circles-across-the-globe-A-North-Carolina-USA-structures-with-the-variability_fig1_353649466
&
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=fairy+circle+sites+USA&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
After 35 years in the Horticulture business/industry, now retired, I’ve seen them, on a small scale, here in PA.
The Good People are nothing you want to mess with!
Animal feeds on plant and ingests seeds.
Animal defecates.
Seeds in feces germinate.
New plant sprouts.
Plant drops seeds.
Seedlings only grow on the outer edge that hasn't had the soil depleted.
New plants drop seeds.
Seedlings only grow outside the necrotic zone, continuing the expansion of the outer ring.
Repeat and the ring keeps getting larger.
The same scenario applies to fungi in wetter areas.
Thanks for the links.
My daughter and fiancé rented a house in Spokane Valley, WA that came with a fairy ring in the front yard. My daughter took on the challenge of eradicating it. She failed. Stubborn things!
That would provide a decaying root system for them to feed upon.
Kinda looks like my lawn where my dog pees. Australia? Could it be kangaroo pee?
I think the circles are from a living fungus, left by plant roots, and can’t be killed by herbicides or pesticides. Have your daughter get a very *powdered* lime and raise the pH, to very alkaline, and I’ll bet that eradicates the fungus. By altering the environment the fungus lives in, the fungus should be seriously ‘disturbed’. It may require several applications. Pls let me know what happens.
Try Rock Salting them to kill the fungus but then You will have to remove the dirt and replace it with viable dirt to get anything to grow there. At least You will hopefully get rid of the fungus situation without spreading it out to a larger area.
Why are fairies tagged with dead spots? Why not trolls or gremlins?
As to the spots, dogs.
My lawn is peppered with them since the two dogs I have are obsessive about peeing on the same damned spot that the other just used. Even girls do it.
Check for critters.
Thanks for the advice. They were in a rental house. They bought a house and left that rental behind, so it’s somebody else’s problem now.
She was in the process of removing the infected dirt. But they left the rental after they bought a brand new house.
Thanks for the tip.
They are flying saucer parking lots. It’s always those pesky aliens.
Sheesh.
I have property and ants do stuff like this. They are quite busy ants clearing about a 6 foot radius of everything around their nest and then they spread out little grains of rock.
In the summer of 2019, my husband and I were in the High Plains of Wyoming in the North Platte River Valley, coming down an offramp from I-25. No time to grab our phones to capture the fascinating scene below the highway, but we both witnessed it.
There was a single “fairy ring” in the sand—a different texture than the surrounding sand, which was dotted with low vegetation. Inside the ring was a harem of four pronghorn does resting on their sides. Their heads were slightly elevated, and their 16 elegant legs and hooves were pointed towards the center of the ring. There were no bucks, or fawns.
Their symmetry was startling, like cutouts. Each seemed a perfect replica of the other, equidistant and curved gracefully around the ring’s diameter. Their bodies were unified in a somewhat cruciform shape, like an emblem or heraldic device. No fantastical mushrooms, rocks, or tiny fairies, but even more so, the effect was ‘magical’.
At a slow velocity, no doubt, we would have noted many differences. Even so, we consider the sight of those graceful creatures reclining in their fungal ring, their daytime rest also quite unusual— a blessing and a gift.
WOW, you’re so blessed to have witnessed that ‘magical’ event. It sounds as though ‘Mother Nature’ did it just for you...
“They bought a house and left that rental behind...”
Good for them.
Isn’t that an indicator of where the transporter beam has been?
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