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Crop Circles, EnglandCrop circles decorate a wheat field in Wiltshire County, England. This southwestern region of the U.K. is also famous for the prehistoric monument Stonehenge. Once thought to be the work of aliens, crop circles—mysterious patterns that often appear overnight across large swaths of farmland—are now the work of ambitious artists. To stamp out their drawings, artists use stomper-boards that press down corn, wheat, and other crops. Their designs, some up to three-quarters of a mile wide, started to appear in the 1970s. Such creative fieldwork could be considered Earth art, or land art—a movement that started in the 1960s to draw attention to the natural world, expand the definition of sculpture, and to reject the commercialization of art, according to Kelly Kivland, a curatorial associate at the Dia Art Foundation, which maintains several Earth art installations around the U.S. Earth art is landscaping on a larger-than-life scale. It is creating ephemeral drawings along coastlines and making enormous and permanent creations in the desert. It sometimes manifests as a trench excavated in the middle of nowhere or the alignment of spectacular celestial views through cement pipes. And lastly, it is about documenting the journey to the remote landscapes, or canvases, where these installations emerge. (Read more about Stonehenge in National Geographic magazine.) —Tasha Eichenseher

Photograph by Diverse Images, UIG/Getty Images

Pictures: 10 Larger-Than-Life Earth Art Installations

Found at remote sites around the world are gigantic art installations meant to blur the lines between landscape and sculpture. Take a tour of some of the planet’s most popular Earth art.