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rfmcdonaldMany people on my friends list linked to this post showing photographs taken by Noah Sheldon of Arizona's Biosphere 2 complex, once intended to be a small-scale self-sufficient biosphere, since abandoned.
This David Knowles article at Sphere suggests that Biosphere 2 is still a worthwhile endeavour.
Biosphere 2 was built by Space Biospheres Ventures in the late 1980s at a cost of $200 million. The project was heralded around the world as the experiment that would eventually lead to the colonization of other planets. The concept was to create a sustainable ecosystem entirely sealed off from the outside world.
Inside 7.2 million cubic feet of sealed glass, several artificial environments were created, from desert to rain forest to a coral reef. Spanning 3.14 acres -- the size of several football fields -- the scale of the facility, which is about 25 north of Tucson, was unprecedented.
This David Knowles article at Sphere suggests that Biosphere 2 is still a worthwhile endeavour.
After a year of entropy, Biosphere 2 was sold to an investment company, which, in turn, allowed New York's Columbia University to manage the property. Under Columbia's supervision, the focus of the project shifted to the study of how the high concentrations of carbon dioxide inside the structures affected plant life. Biosphere 2, it turned out, was a great laboratory for tracking the effects of climate change on a number of different ecosystems.
"They were able to show that as more carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere, coral reefs are endangered and die off," said Joaquin Ruiz, dean of the College of Science at the University of Arizona, who now oversees Biosphere 2.
According to Ruiz, Biosphere 2's initial attempts at creating a fully enclosed system have produced a unique tool to study a similarly enclosed environment: Earth's. "Because of its scale, there is no other facility like it."
Researchers at the University of Arizona have made important findings about the effects of drought on varying species of trees planted inside the biosphere more than two decades ago.
"We like to say that the Biosphere 2 was built slightly before its time," Ruiz said. "But now, it has become one of the best places to study the effects of climate change."
Biosphere 2 has also regained its appeal as a tourist attraction, drawing nearly 70,000 visitors in 2009.
