For over a decade, the origin of the numerous circular bare patches amidst the African grasslands, known as fairy circles, has been a topic of discussion among researchers. In a recent study, biologist Prof. Dr. Norbert Jürgens and soil scientist Dr. Alexander Gröngröft from the University of Hambur
As early as 2013, the Hamburg botanist Norbert Jürgens published, that purely subterranean sand termites of the genuscause the bare patches and, by eliminating the plants in the sandy soils, enable long-lasting storage of water after infrequent rainfall. This explanation, published inOther researchers also investigated the mysterious phenomenon, e.g. at the University of Göttingen using modeling approaches.
Norbert Jürgens and Alexander Gröngröft now refute the central arguments of the modelers from Göttingen in the article published by PPEES: In their study, Jürgens and Gröngröft demonstrated the presence of sand termites on more than 1,700 fairy circles in Namibia, Angola, and South Africa. “Of even greater significance is that the analysis of my colleague Gröngröft and the measurements of the hydrological properties of the desert sand carried out in the laboratory invalidate the crucial foundations of the assumption of self-regulation,” says Jürgens.
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