Sprawling across a remote swath of the Namib Desert, rugged grasses eke out a living from the region's meager rainfall.
Recent research has pointed more firmly toward self-organization, in which the grasses form fairy circles toIn 2020, research led by Stephan Getzin, from the Department of Ecosystem Modeling at the University of Goettingen in Germany, added further support to the water-scarcity scenario, which Getzin and his colleagues described as anIn their latest study, Getzin and a team of researchers returned to Namibia in hopes of finding even more compelling evidence, investigating fairy circles in 10...
They studied the circumstances around dying grass after rainfall, and set up soil-moisture sensors in and around fairy circles to record data at half-hour intervals, beginning in the dry season of 2020 and continuing until the end of 2022's rainy season. "The sudden absence of grass for most areas within the circles cannot be explained by the activity of termites because there was no biomass for these insects to feed on," Getzin."But more importantly, we can show that the termites are not responsible because the grasses die immediately after rainfall without any sign of creatures feeding on the root."