In Arizona desert, scientists are living in their own world
Writer Mary Kay Carson tells readers about the intriguing attempt to live in what she calls “Spaceship Earth,” in a new book, “Inside Biosphere 2.”
For their book, “Inside Biosphere 2,” photographer Tom Uhlman and writer Mary Kay Carson focused on the science that is going on in Biosphere 2.
It’s not all sand in the Arizona desert. You also can find a rain forest, a savanna and even an ocean. What’s even more strange: They are all inside.
Those very different environments are part of Biosphere 2, a series of interconnected buildings that look like gigantic greenhouses from the future. A group of scientists works there. And because it is open to the public, there are lots of visitors, too.
“Once you take a tour, you’re pretty much hooked,” says Mary Kay Carson, the author of the new book “Inside Biosphere 2.” “It’s a one-of-a-kind place.”
Construction on Biosphere 2 began in the 1980s and lasted four years. It was intended to be a self-contained unit in which people could live and grow their own food. This experiment, which was paid for by a Texas billionaire, was supposed to work as a miniature version of Earth (also known as Biosphere 1) and lead to moneymaking technologies that could be used in space missions. In 1991, eight scientists began a two-year stay inside the structure.
Carson tells readers about this intriguing attempt to live in what she calls “Spaceship Earth,” but the focus of her book is on the scientific work being done there now. This research, she says, “is about what’s happening to Earth, not how to colonize Mars.”
Much of this science relates to challenges caused by climate change, and this huge structure has been turned into an ideal place to conduct large experiments. As one scientist puts it, Biosphere 2 “has this sweet spot between the complexity of nature and the control of the laboratory.”
Each section of Biosphere 2 has a fascinating story. To create an indoor tropical coral reef, materials were taken from different parts of the world. Milk tanker trucks carried seawater from the Pacific Ocean. Fish, sea urchins, lobsters and living coral were brought from the Caribbean, and sand was brought from the Bahamas. This attempt was not successful; the glass windows blocked too much sunlight. But even though the corals died, useful experiments are happening in this indoor ocean.
Carson also shows how Biosphere 2’s forest, which is warmer than a typical tropical forest, helps increase our scientific understanding of climate change.
“The rain forest is pretty amazing because it’s been there from the beginning,” she said. “It’s into its third decade. Certain species have died out, and others have done well. It’s not unlike . . . what hotter, drier tropical forests might face around the world.”
The work that most interests Carson is the LEO Project, which she calls a “marvel of engineering.” LEO stands for Landscape Evolution Observatory, and it focuses on three giant hillsides of dirt each weighing 1 million pounds.
Using sensors, samplers and suspended weather stations, scientists are answering such basic questions as how does rock become soil? What happens to rainwater once it soaks into soil? How does carbon move through the landscape? As Carson puts it, “These are basic questions that require a big science project!”
Carson notes the positive, problem-solving approach that all of the Biosphere 2 scientists take as they do their work: “They know that the climate is going to change, so we need to figure out how we can measure the changes so we can compensate for them.”