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Tag: fairy circles

Fairy Circles in South Africa

by Timothy Whitehead on Jun.23, 2017, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA

We recently took a trip from Cape Town to the Northern Cape Province in South Africa and on the way noticed what looked like patches of bare ground or nearly bare ground:

The above are photos we took, but you can also explore the region in Street View.

This reminded us of Fairy Circles, a phenomenon in Namibia. Last time we looked at Fairy Circles we also noted a similar phenomenon in Australia. We have also seen similar patterns around the world created by ants and termites. And in South America we looked at patterns that are apparently created by worm poo.

At the time, we did not think to try and find one near the road and see if we could see any ant activity. Once we got back from the trip we had a look in Google Earth and found the patches are even more visible from above and cover a vast region:

We believe these circles are created by ant or termite colonies. They can even be seen in cultivated fields, which suggests the soil is permanently changed. The Namibian and Australian fairy circles are found mostly on very flat land and scientists believe water plays a role in their formation. However, these ones can be seen on hillsides and slopes and seem to be stopped only by extremely rocky ground.

In most cases, the spots consist of areas of reduced vegetation, but in some places the pattern seems to be reversed, with more vegetation in the spots:

In some cases there are bare rings:

For the locations of some of the screenshots above see this KML file. But be sure to explore more as they cover a vast region.

The post Fairy Circles in South Africa appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

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Fairy circles

by Timothy Whitehead on Mar.17, 2016, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA

In January we had a look at ant and termite colonies as seen from space. In that post we mentioned the phenomena of Fairy Circles from Namibia. Fairy Circles are regular patches of bare ground in the grasslands of Namibia as seen below


Fairy Circles in Namibia

A similar phenomenon has now been found in Australia. Read more about it here. This is what they look like in Google Earth:


Fairy Circles in Australia

There is Street View going through the area in Australia with Fairy Circles and you can see them along the sides of the road.

There has long been controversy over the origin of the Namibian Fairy circles, but the Australian scientists are fairly sure that the circles arise from feedback mechanisms related to plant growth and water run-off. They also predict that such patterns will arise in other parts of the globe with semi-arid conditions. So, we thought we would have a look and see if we could find any more examples.

The closest we have found so far are:


Somalia.


Burkina Faso.


Senegal.

The above patterns occur over vast areas. They are not quite the same as fairy circles and we could not find any ground level photos.

We also came across this interesting pattern in Australia:

Fairy Circles are patches of bare ground in grassland. This looks like patches of grass in bare ground.

To find all the above locations in Google Earth download this KML file. We have also included the locations from the ‘Ant Cities’ post as the patterns are remarkably similar.

The post Fairy circles appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

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