Coordinates: 
32°34′43.60″N 110°51′02.14″W
Biosphere 2 is an Earth systems science research facility. Owned by the
University of Arizona since 2011. Its mission is to serve as a center for research, outreach, teaching and
lifelong learning about Earth, its living systems, and its place in the universe. It is a 3.14-acre (1.27-hectare)
[1] structure originally built to be an
artificial, materially closed ecological system in
Oracle, Arizona, US by Space Biosphere Ventures, a joint venture whose principal officers were
John P. Allen,
inventor and Executive Director, and Margret Augustine, CEO.
Constructed between 1987 and 1991, it explored the web of interactions
within life systems in a structure with five areas based on biomes, and
an agricultural area and human living and working space to study the
interactions between humans, farming and technology with the rest of
nature. It also explored the use of closed biospheres in
space colonization, and allowed the study and manipulation of a biosphere without harming Earth's. The name comes from Earth's
biosphere, "Biosphere 1". Project funding came primarily from the joint venture's financial partner,
Ed Bass' Decisions Investment, costing US$200 million from 1985 to 2007, including land, support research
greenhouses, test module, and staff facilities.
[citation needed]
Biosphere 2 sits on a sprawling 40-acre (16-hectare) science campus that is open to the public.
The size of two and a half football fields, it remains the largest closed system created.
[2] The glass facility is elevated 4,000 feet (1,200 m) above sea level at the base of the
Santa Catalina Mountains, half an hour outside
Tucson.
[3]
Biosphere 2 contained representative
biomes: a 1,900 square meter
rainforest, an 850 square meter
ocean with a
coral reef, a 450 square meter
mangrove wetlands, a 1,300 square meter
savannah grassland, a 1,400 square meter
fog desert, a 2,500 square meter
agricultural system, a human
habitat, and a below-ground infrastructure. Heating and cooling water circulated through independent piping systems and
passive solar input through the glass
space frame panels covering most of the facility, and
electrical power was supplied into Biosphere 2 from an onsite natural gas energy center.
[4]
Biosphere 2 had two closure experiments, Missions 1 and 2, during
which the structure was sealed with researchers living inside. The
first, with a crew of eight people, ran for two years from 1991 to 1993.
Following a six-month transition period during which researchers
entered the facility through airlock doors and conducted research and
system engineering improvements, a second closure with a crew of seven
people was conducted March 1994 – September 1994. In the course of that
second mission, a dispute over management of the financial aspects of
the project caused the on-site management to be locked out, and the
mission itself to be ended prematurely. The sealed nature of the
structure allowed scientists to monitor the continually changing
chemistry of the air, water and soil contained within. Health of the
human crew was monitored by a medical doctor inside and an outside
medical team.
[citation needed]
In 1995,
Columbia University
took management of the facility for research and as a campus until
2003. In 1996, they changed the virtually airtight, materially closed
structure designed for closed system research, to a "flow-through"
system, and halted closed system research. They manipulated carbon
dioxide levels for
global warming research, and injected desired amounts of carbon dioxide, venting as needed.
[5]
By 2006, the property, in
exurban Tucson, was slated to be redeveloped for a planned community.
[6] As of June 5, 2007, the property including surrounding land, 1,650 acres (6.7 km
2),
had been sold to a residential home developer for US$50 million. A
development including homes and a resort hotel was planned for a portion
of the land. The Biosphere remained open for tours.
[7]
On June 26, 2007, the
University of Arizona announced it would take over research at the Biosphere 2. The announcement ended fears that the glass
vivarium
would be demolished. University officials said private gifts and grants
enabled them to cover research and operating costs for three years with
the possibility of extending funding for ten years.
[8]
It was extended for ten years, and is now engaged in research projects
including research into the terrestrial water cycle and how it relates
to ecology, atmospheric science, soil geochemistry, and climate change.
In June 2011, the University announced that it would assume full
ownership of Biosphere 2, effective July 1.
[9]
The agricultural area of Biosphere 2 was planted a year before
closure, and biospherians managed their farm, growing and processing
food, so that there would be a supply of food grown inside when the full
closure began. During week-long periods of simulated full closure, data
were gathered on agricultural operations and productivity, and crew
adapted to their workload.
[citation needed]
These mini-missions were too short to attempt any meaningful
agriculture or animal husbandry. No data were gathered that might have
been useful in estimating whether the Biosphere itself was capable of
sustaining eight people for two years.
[citation needed]
First mission
The first closed mission lasted from September 26, 1991 to September 26, 1993. The crew were: medical doctor and researcher
Roy Walford,
Jane Poynter,
Taber MacCallum, Mark Nelson, Sally Silverstone, Abigail Alling (a late replacement for Silke Schneider), Mark Van Thillo, and Linda Leigh.
[citation needed]
The agricultural system produced 83% of the total diet, which
included crops of bananas, papayas, sweet potatoes, beets, peanuts,
lablab and cowpea beans, rice, and wheat.
[10][11]
No toxic chemicals could be used, since they would impact health.
During the first year the eight inhabitants reported continual hunger.
During the second year, the crew produced over a ton more food, average
caloric intake increased, and they regained some weight lost during the
first year.
[citation needed]
They consumed the same low-calorie, nutrient-dense diet which Roy
Walford had studied in his research on extending lifespan through diet.
[12]
Medical markers indicated the health of the crew during the two years
was excellent. Strikingly, they showed the same improvement in health
indices such as lowering of blood cholesterol, blood pressure,
enhancement of immune system. They lost an average of 16% of their
pre-entry body weight before stabilizing and regaining some weight
during their second year.
[13] Subsequent studies showed that the biospherians'
metabolism became more efficient at extracting nutrients from their food as an adaptation to the low-calorie, high nutrient diet.
[14]
Some of the domestic animals that were planned for the agricultural area during the first mission include four
pygmy goats and one billy goat from the plateau region of Nigeria, 35 hens and three roosters (a mix of Indian jungle fowl (
Gallus gallus),
Japanese silky bantam, and a hybrid of these), two sows and one boar pig (feral), as well as
tilapia fish grown in a rice and azolla pond system originating millennia ago in China.
[15]
A strategy of "species-packing" was practiced to ensure that food
webs and ecological function could be maintained if some species did not
survive. The
fog desert area became more
chaparral
due to condensation from the space frame. The savannah was seasonally
active; its biomass was cut and stored by the crew as part of their
management of carbon dioxide. Rainforest
pioneer species grew rapidly, but trees there and in the savannah suffered from
etiolation and weakness caused by lack of
stress wood, normally created in response to winds in natural conditions.
Corals
reproduced in the ocean area and crew helped maintain ocean system
health by hand-harvesting algae from the corals, manipulating calcium
carbonate and pH levels to prevent the ocean becoming too acidic, and by
installing an improved
protein skimmer to supplement the algae turf
scrubber system originally installed to remove excess nutrients.
[16] The mangrove area developed rapidly but with less understory than a typical
wetland possibly because of reduced light levels.
[17]
Biosphere 2 suffered from CO
2 levels that "fluctuated wildly" and most of the
vertebrate species and all of the
pollinating insects died.
[18] Insect pests, like
cockroaches, boomed. In practice,
ants, a companion to one of the tree species (
Cecropia) in the Rain Forest, had been introduced. By 1993 the tramp ant species
Paratrechina longicornis, local to the area had been unintentionally sealed in and had come to dominate.
[19] Galagos
reproduced in Biosphere 2, but a number of pollinating insects were
lost to ant predation and several bird species were lost. However, many
of the pollinating duties were performed by those ants and cockroaches.
[citation needed]
Challenges
Among the problems and miscalculations encountered in the first
mission were overstocked fish clogging systems, unanticipated
condensation making the "desert" too wet, population explosions of
greenhouse ants and cockroaches, and morning glories overgrowing the
"rainforest", blocking out other plants.
[20][21]
There was controversy when the public learned that the project had
allowed an injured member to leave and return, carrying new material
inside. The team claimed the only new supplies brought in were plastic
bags, but others accused them of bringing food and other items. More
criticism was raised when it was learned that, likewise, the project had
been pumping oxygen inside, to make up for a failure in the balance of
the system that resulted in the amount of oxygen steadily declining.
[22]
The
oxygen
inside the facility, which began at 20.9%, fell at a steady pace and
after 16 months was down to 14.5%. This is equivalent to the oxygen
availability at an elevation of 4,080 meters (13,400 ft).
[23] Since some biospherians were starting to have
symptoms like
sleep apnea and fatigue, Walford and the medical team decided to boost oxygen with injections in January and August 1993.
Daily fluctuation of
carbon dioxide dynamics was typically 600 ppm because of the strong drawdown during sunlight hours by plant
photosynthesis, followed by a similar rise during the nighttime when system
respiration dominated. As expected, there was also a strong seasonal signature to CO
2
levels, with wintertime levels as high as 4,000-4,500 ppm and
summertime levels near 1,000 ppm. The crew worked to manage the CO
2 by occasionally turning on a
CO2 scrubber,
activating and de-activating the desert and savannah through control of
irrigation water, cutting and storing biomass to sequester carbon, and
utilizing all potential planting areas with fast-growing species to
increase system photosynthesis.
[24]
Many suspected the drop in oxygen was due to
microbes
in the soil. The soils were selected to have enough carbon to provide
for the plants of the ecosystems to grow from infancy to maturity, a
plant mass increase of perhaps 20 tons (18,000 kg).
[25]
The release rate of that soil carbon as carbon dioxide by respiration
of soil microbes was an unknown that the Biosphere 2 experiment was
designed to reveal.
El Niño weather systems also blocked necessary sunlight resulting in lower oxygen production.
[citation needed]
The respiration rate was faster than the photosynthesis (possibly in
part due to relatively low light penetration through the glazed
structure) resulting in a slow decrease of oxygen. A mystery accompanied
the oxygen decline: the corresponding increase in carbon dioxide did
not appear. This concealed the underlying process until an investigation
by Jeff Severinghaus and
Wallace Broecker of Columbia University's
Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory using isotopic analysis showed that carbon dioxide was reacting with exposed concrete inside Biosphere 2 to form
calcium carbonate, thereby sequestering both carbon and oxygen.
[26]
The discovery of the small difference between rate of respiration and
rate of photosynthesis depended on the extremely low leak rate of
Biosphere 2. It was shown by Dempster that had Biosphere 2 leaked as
much as other closed ecological test chambers, the wash-out effect of
outside air mixing in would have concealed the entire imbalance.
[citation needed]
Second mission
During the transition period between missions, extensive research and
system improvements had been undertaken. Concrete was sealed to prevent
uptake of carbon dioxide. The second mission began on March 6, 1994,
with an announced run of ten months. Crew was Norberto Romo (Capt.),
John Druitt, Matt Finn, Pascale Maslin, Charlotte Godfrey, Rodrigo Romo
and Tilak Mahato. The second crew achieved complete sufficiency in food
production.
[27]
On April 1, 1994 a severe dispute within the management team led to the ousting of the on-site management by
federal marshals serving a restraining order, leaving management of the mission to the Bannon & Co. team from Beverly Hills, California.
[28]
At 3 am on April 5, 1994, Abigail Alling and Mark Van Thillo, members
of the first crew, allegedly vandalized the project from outside,
[29]
opening one double-airlock door and three single door emergency exits,
leaving them open for approximately fifteen minutes. Five panes of glass
were also broken. About 10% of the biosphere's air was exchanged with
the outside during this time, according to
Donella Meadows,
who had a communication from Ms. Alling in which she explained that
they wanted to give those inside the choice of continuing or leaving, as
she didn't know what they had been told of the new situation.
[30]
Soon after that, the captain Norberto Romo (by then married to
Margret Augustine) left the Biosphere. He was replaced by Bernd Zabel,
who had been nominated as captain of the first mission but who was
replaced at the last minute. Two months later, Matt Smith replaced Matt
Finn.
[citation needed]
The ownership and management company Space Biospheres Ventures was
officially dissolved on June 1, 1994. This left the scientific and
business management of the mission to the interim turnaround team, who
had been contracted by the financial partner, Decisions Investment Co.
[23]
Mission 2 was ended prematurely on September 6, 1994.
[23]
Columbia University
After a successful turnaround by Bannon & Co. in December 1995 the Biosphere 2 owners transferred management to
Columbia University of New York City which embarked on a successful eight-year run at the Biosphere 2 campus.
[31] Columbia ran Biosphere 2 as a research site and campus until 2003,
[32]
at which time management reverted to the owners. During Columbia's
tenure, Columbia students would often spend one semester at the site.
[citation needed]
Site sold
On January 10, 2005, Decisions Investments Corporation, owner of
Biosphere 2, announced that the project's 1,600-acre (650 ha) campus was
for sale. They preferred a research use to be found for the complex but
were not excluding buyers with different intentions, such as
universities, hotels, resorts, spas, etc. In June, 2007
Associated Press announced a $50 million sale to CDO Ranching & Development, L.P.
[7]
1,500 houses and a resort hotel were planned, but the main structure
was still to be available for research and educational use. CDO Ranching
& Development has purchased the adjacent property and is planning
to build hotels there.
[citation needed]
Under new management
On June 26, 2007, the
University of Arizona
announced that it took over management of Biosphere 2, using the site
as a laboratory to study climate change, among other things.
[citation needed]
Acquisition by University of Arizona
On June 27, 2011, the University announced that it would assume full
ownership of Biosphere 2, effective July 1. CDO Ranching &
Development donated the land, Biosphere buildings and several other
support and administrative buildings. The Philecology Foundation (a
nonprofit research foundation founded by Ed Bass) pledged US$20 million
for the ongoing science and operations.
[9]
Engineering
Biosphere 2 from the inside. Seen here are the
Savanna (foreground) and
Ocean (background) sections.
The above-ground physical structure of Biosphere 2 was made of steel
tubing and high-performance glass and steel frames. The frame and
glazing materials were designed and made to specification by a firm run
by a one-time associate of
Buckminster Fuller,
Peter Pearce (Pearce Structures, Inc.). The window seals and structures
had to be designed to be almost perfectly airtight, such that the air
exchange would be extremely slow, to avoid damage to the experimental
results.
[citation needed]
During the day, the heat from the sun caused the air inside to expand
and during the night it cooled and contracted. To avoid having to deal
with the huge forces that maintaining a constant volume would create,
the structure had large diaphragms kept in domes called "lungs".
[citation needed]
Since opening a window was impossible, the structure also required
huge air conditioners to control the temperature and avoid killing the
plants within. For every unit of solar energy that entered the
structure, the air conditioners would expend approximately three times
as much energy to cool the habitat back down.
[citation needed]
Science
A special issue of the Ecological Engineering journal edited by
Marino and Howard T. Odum (1999), published as "Biosphere 2: Research
Past and Present" (Elsevier, 1999) represents the most comprehensive
assemblage of collected papers and findings from Biosphere 2. The papers
range from calibrated models that describe the system metabolism,
hydrologic balance, and heat and humidity, to papers that describe
rainforest, mangrove, ocean, and agronomic system development in this
carbon dioxide-rich environment.
[33][34]
Praise and criticism
One view of Biosphere 2 was that it was "the most exciting scientific project to be undertaken in the U.S. since President
John F. Kennedy launched us toward the moon".
[35] Others called it "
New Age drivel masquerading as science".
[36]
The Institute for Ecotechnics, which awarded Margret Augustine and
other Biospherians their science credentials, was shown by a
CBC documentary to be housed in an art gallery and café in London.
[37]
The Institute is indeed housed to this day in a multi-leveled old
Londonian building which includes a prestigious Art Gallery for
contemporary non-Western art on the first floor. John Allen and Roy
Walford did have mainstream credentials.
John Allen
held a degree in Metallurgical-Mining Engineering from the Colorado
School of Mines, and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
[15][38]
Roy Walford received his doctorate of medicine from the University of
Chicago and taught at UCLA as a Professor of Pathology for 35 years.
Shortly after leaving Biosphere 2's first mission, Mark Nelson obtained
his Ph. D under Professor T. H. Odum in Ecological Engineering.
[citation needed]
Questioning the credentials of the participants (despite the
contribution in the preparation phase of Biosphere 2 of worldwide
top-level scientists and among others the Russian Academy of Science),
Marc Cooper wrote
[39]
that "the group that built, conceived, and directs the Biosphere
project is not a group of high-tech researchers on the cutting edge of
science but a clique of recycled theater performers that evolved out of
an authoritarian—and decidedly non-scientific—personality cult". He was
referring to the
Synergia Ranch in
New Mexico,
where indeed many of the Biospherians did practice theater under John
Allen's leadership, and began to develop the ideas behind Biosphere 2.
[40]
However, the original Biosphere 2 Science Advisory Committee, chaired
by Tom Lovejoy of the Smithsonian Institution, in the report of August
1992 reported: "The committee is in agreement that the conception and
construction of Biosphere 2 were acts of vision and courage. The scale
of Biosphere 2 is unique and Biosphere 2 is already providing unexpected
scientific results not possible through other means (notably the
documented, unexpected decline in atmospheric oxygen levels.) Biosphere 2
will make important scientific contributions in the fields of
biogeochemical cycling, the ecology of closed ecological systems, and
restoration ecology." Furthermore, Columbia University assembled outside
scientists to evaluate the potential of the facility, and concluded the
following: "A group of world-class scientists got together and decided
the Biosphere 2 facility is an exceptional laboratory for addressing
critical questions relative to the future of Earth and its environment."
[41]
One of their own scientific consultants came to be critical of the enterprise, too. Dr.
Ghillean Prance, director of the
Royal Botanical Gardens in
Kew, designed the rainforest
biome
inside the Biosphere. Although he later recanted, acknowledging the
unique scope of this experiment and contributed to its success as a
consultant, in a 1983 interview (8 years before the start of the
experiment), Prance said, "I was attracted to the Institute of
Ecotechnics because funds for research were being cut and the institute
seemed to have a lot of money which it was willing to spend freely.
Along with others, I was ill-used. Their interest in science is not
genuine. They seem to have some sort of secret agenda, they seem to be
guided by some sort of religious or philosophical system."
[42] After this statement, however, he initiated a renewed collaboration with Biosphere 2 and became a consultant from 1987 to 1993.
[citation needed]
The ethnosphere: psychology and conflict
Much of the evidence for isolated human groups comes from psychological studies of scientists overwintering in
Antarctic research stations.
[43] The study of this phenomenon is "
confined environment psychology", and according to Jane Poynter
[44][45] not nearly enough of it was brought to bear on Biosphere 2.
Before the first closure mission was half over, the group had split
into two factions and people who had been intimate friends had become
implacable enemies, barely on speaking terms. Potential conflict had
been pointed to as a possibility since this was the first experiment
ever in closed, confined, system, over such a "long" period of time.
[citation needed]
The faction inside the bubble came from a rift between the joint
venture partners on how the science should proceed, as biospherics or as
specialist ecosystem studies (perceived as reductionist and precisely
contrary to the raison d'être of the experiment). The faction that
included Poynter felt strongly that they should be making formal
proposals for research for the Science Advisory Committee to evaluate.
The other faction included Abigail Alling, the titular director of
research
[46] inside the bubble, and who sided with John Allen in blocking that move. On February 14, the entire SAC resigned.
[47] Time Magazine wrote:
Now, the veneer of credibility, already bruised by allegations of
tamper-prone data, secret food caches and smuggled supplies, has cracked
... the two-year experiment in self-sufficiency is starting to look
less like science and more like a $150 million stunt.[48]
Undoubtedly the lack of oxygen and the calorie restricted nutrient dense diet
[49]
contributed to low morale. The Alling faction feared that the Poynter
group were prepared to go so far as to import food, if it meant making
them fitter to carry out research projects. They considered that would
be a project failure by definition.
In November 1992, the hungry Biospherians began eating emergency food supplies that had not been grown inside the bubble.
[50] Poynter made Chris Helms,
PR
Director for the enterprise, aware of this. She was promptly dismissed
by Margret Augustine, CEO of Space Biospheres Ventures, and told to come
out of the biosphere. This order was, however, never carried out.
Poynter writes that she simply decided to stay put, correctly reasoning
that the order could not be enforced without effectively terminating the
closure.
See also
