Biosphere II was a vision of the future that failed. Now, Jim McClellan reports, it has been reclaimed by mainstream scientists
The huge sheets of cheap plastic look out of place hanging in Biosphere II, the sealed glass ecosystem in the Arizona desert, built at enormous expense and once hailed as a high-tech temple of the age.
The sheeting has been put up to seal off the miniature rainforest from the other “wilderness biomes” – desert, savannah, ocean and swamplands – all part of a continuing effort to reclaim Biosphere II (Biosphere I is the Earth) for “official” science, to turn it into a useful research tool for examining the effects of rising carbon dioxide levels on the environment. In the next few weeks, Bernd Zabel, director of engineering services, plans to run a leak test, pumping a trace gas into the sealed-off rainforest, then measuring how much finds its way into the rest of Biosphere II.
All this represents a fairly drastic change of direction. When it was completed in 1991 (after four years building work and $200- million, mostly provided by billionaire businessman Edward Bass), Biosphere II was apparently headed for the stars: a prototype space colony of the future. One day, people would live on other planets in such self-sufficient sealed spheres, growing their own food and recycling their water and waste.
The big idea behind Biosphere II belongs to science fiction, and it continues to inspire writers, artists and video games developers – Psygnosis’s new SF shoot-’em- up game G Police is set in various biospheres on the surface of Kalisto. But what looks good on the computer screen doesn’t always work in real life, and, by 1994, Biosphere II had crash landed.
When eight biospherians (four men, four women) first locked themselves inside the world in a bottle, in September 1991, the project was already dogged by allegations that the company in charge, Space Biosphere Ventures, (rooted in an old 1960s commune) was a thinly disguised eco-cult.
The scientific establishment poured scorn, dismissing the project’s popular science and social experiments as lax and incompetent.
Certainly, basic mistakes were made setting up the project. It was naively decided to use soil rich in organic matter (better for growing crops), without realising that this would increase levels of carbon dioxide and trigger reactions with the building’s concrete base to reduce the overall available oxygen.
Then there were the kind of “unforeseen effects” perhaps predictable when you attempt to replicate complex natural systems. All the bees taken into the Biosphere died and the biospherians had to pollinate their crops themselves.
“There are definitely problems with the idea of building artificial biospheres,” says Zabel, who has worked intermittently on the project since it began and lived inside the bubble for six months.
“I don’t think the first experiment was a failure. We found out a lot. But if you ask me, is it possible to build a 100% closed system, I would have to say: no.”
Zabel argues that many of the problems stemmed from the fact that the project was originally a for-profit operation. “The management wanted to use what they discovered for profit. So they were not open with the data and didn’t release research details.”
Things have now completely changed. Biosphere II is a non-profit venture run by Columbia University, which stepped in last year and has been strenuously making links with the official science community. The unorthodox human experiments are over. Reputable researchers have been invited in, and undergraduates can now do a term-long placement at the Biosphere. Though Edward Bass continues to pay most of the $8 to 10- million annual operating costs, Columbia is trying to build revenue from conference trade and tourism.
Indeed tourists can now explore part of the Biosphere – the human habitat, the hi-tech living quarters. There’s the command room filled with computer monitors, a very flashy kitchen and the bedrooms.
The rest of Biosphere II remains off limits to the public. It’s a pity because it is like no place on earth – it’s hot and humid, but oddly quiet apart from the regular booming of the machine that makes waves in the ocean. The air feels thin. Carbon dioxide levels remain high.
“Biosphere II offers a preview of what atmosphere might be like in 50 years time if global warming happens the way people predict,” says Zabel. Indeed, the whole place feels like nothing so much as New York’s Central Park redesigned by JG Ballard.
Everywhere, you see the so-called crazy ants. These were uninvited guests who came in on some of the rainforest plants and quickly “outcompeted” other ants and took over. For scientists studying island ecologies, this kind of invasion offers a potentially interesting analogue to real world events in places like Hawaii, where indigenous flora and fauna are being threatened by outsider species.
Researchers at the Biosphere have to learn to make a virtue of the problems created by the past. Take the greenhouse’s stretch of coastal fog desert which is not quite a desert any more. Thanks to the copious condensation falling from the roof, it is now rather green.
Nevertheless, researchers say that the process of returning things to their “natural” state will teach them a lot about desert ecologies.
Scientific research is furthest along in the Biosphere’s little ocean, where most work revolves around the miniature coral reef. According to marine technician Heather Anderson, experiments are being done which look at why corals live in low- nutrient environments and at whether coral can be used to determine what atmospheric conditions were like in the past.
Closest to delivering tangible results is Chris Langdon of Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, who has been doing experiments for the last two years to determine the effect of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide on the world’s coral reefs.
High levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide cause the surface acidity of the ocean to fall, resulting in reduction of carbonate ion, an essential ingredient in the calcium carbonate skeleton that corals need to grow.
By artificially modifying the carbonate ion concentration in the Biosphere ocean, Langdon has discovered that the rate of growth of the coral reef is reduced by 10% relative to the pre-industrial rate (measured in 1850), 38% relative to the standard prediction for the year 2100 and 84% relative to a more accurate figure for 2100 if the developing world catches up with the West.
Langdon is planning to use the Biosphere ocean for further research into the effect of higher water temperature and the effects of human disturbances such as nutrient overloading and over-fishing.
Was he ever put off working at the Biosphere by its past reputation? “After looking over the facility I knew that it had possibilities for good research,” Langdon replies. “As long as the research produced withstands the scrutiny of the scientific peer review process, the past reputation of Biosphere II will not be an issue.”
In a way, the scientists who have now taken over at Biosphere II are in quite a lucky position. They’ve been handed an incredible research tool – or perhaps a toy (with its geometric space frame construction, the Biosphere does at times look toy-like: a Meccano project that got out of hand). This is something that would never have been built by the scientific establishment.
And thanks to the Biosphere’s unusual past, their work has an audience. (It’s hard to imagine around 200 000 tourists a year coming to see the average scientific research centre.)
It’s perhaps not surprising that, after some initial suspicions, most scientists who wander round Biosphere II wind up enthusiastic converts.
“At first, their attitude tends to be: What is this place? This is totally goofy,” says Anderson. “But at the end of the tour they’re like, `How many gallons are in the ocean and what if I wanted to do this kind of experiment?’ It’s always the same . They come in all highfalutin’ and come out thinking it’s kind of neat.”