A constructive characterisation of circuits in the simple $(2,1)$-sparse matroid

A simple graph $G=(V,E)$ is a $(2,1)$-circuit if $\mathrm{\mid }E\mathrm{\mid }=2\mathrm{\mid }V\mathrm{\mid }$ and $|E(H)|\leq 2|V(H)|-1$foreverypropersubgraph$H$of$G$. Motivated, in part, by ongoing work to understand unique realisations of graphs on surfaces, we derive a constructive characterisation of $(2,1)$-circuits. The characterisation uses the well known 1-extension and $X$-replacement operations as well as several summation moves to glue together $(2,1)$-circuits over small cutsets.