Namib fairy circles
Círculos de hadas del Namib
- Date
- 1970s (descripción); 2013-2017 (hipótesis) · confidence medium
- Place
- Southern Namib Desert, Hardap, Namibia
- Credited to
- Norbert Jürgens (termites), Stephan Getzin and Corina Tarnita (self-organisation)
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Circular bare patches about 2-12 m across dotting the Namib grasslands, sometimes in regular patterns. Their origin is attributed to sand termites or to plant competition for water.
The phenomenon has been described since the 1970s; the sand-termite hypothesis (Jürgens, 2013) competes with vegetation self-organisation (Getzin 2015; Tarnita 2017). There is still no agreement. Another hypothesis links them to gas emissions.
What it led to
- self-organisation models of ecological patterns
- debate on the role of termites and water gradients
- aerial and drone imagery to detect vegetation patterns