OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Since the Namibian fairy circles were described for the first time by modern humans 50 years
ago, and possibly during the Stone Age chiselled in rock by the Bergdama people, many peer-reviewed
papers, as well as popular articles have been published on fairy circles. There are
quite a number of extremely diverse theories given as the cause of the formation of these
hundreds of thousands of nearly circular barren patches. However, scientists still do not agree
on the reason(s) behind this intriguing phenomenon. In this presentation we’ll present
geochemical, phytometabolomical and GIS spatial patterning evidence supporting that the
fairy circles are caused by the allelopathic effects of Euphorbia species. We will also discuss
the shocking decline of Euphorbia populations in the Namib pro-desert, possibly due to climate
change.
The melting ice of the poles is often used as an upsetting image illustrating climate change.
The hundreds of thousands of fairy circles may possibly be a similar alarming image of
vegetation decline due to climate change.
