Quan-Xing Liu
The most famous so-called fairy circles are grass-ringed patches of barren earth found in Namibia and Australia. Their lesser-known cousins – transient rings of plants found in Chinese salt marshes –could help explain why these patterns naturally form and may be indicators of ecosystems resilient to climate change.
Previous research has shown that some self-organising patterns in nature provide insights into ecosystem resilience. But transient ones that change shape over time – for example, from spots to rings and then to concentric rings – haven’t been studied as much as persistent ones like fairy circles that mostly stay the same.