Under New Management, Biosphere 2 Explores Research Opportunities

Blueprints for a Greenhouse Long plagued by logistical problems and dogged by controversy, the troubled Biosphere 2, under new management, is attempting to revitalize one of the most criticized aspects of the program--the quality of its science. Since the summer, more than a dozen geologists, biogeochemists, ecologists, and climate modelers have visited the 3.15-acre Oracle, Ariz., facility--the world's largest enclosed artificial ecosystem--to evaluate its potential experimental uses and have made recommendations, in a series of "white papers," for various investigations that might take advantage of its unique features. The evaluation is part of an effort by the new management team to generate a long-term scientific plan and restructure the enterprise as a full-scale research center. The scientists' proposals span three broad areas of possible study within the facility: biogeochemical cycles; ecology and plant biology; and modeling systems. A member of the new team of scientific consultants who is quite familiar with the enclosure and the program's troubled past is Walter Adey, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Smithsonian Institution's marine systems laboratory and the primary consultant in designing the original miniature ocean for Biosphere 2. Adey resigned from the project over scientific differences, but has returned to take part in the reexamination. Adey sees unique value to the Biosphere project in the realm of ecosystem modeling. Biosphere 2 "is not really a new endeavor," he remarks. "It's just that it is on a much larger scale than any other model system before." Built in the late 1980s by a group of environmentalists, Bio-sphere 2--which includes miniature versions of a savanna, rain forest, marsh, farm, and ocean enclosed within glass-and-steel domes--was touted as an attempt to better understand the workings of the Earth's own biosphere and to see if an artificial ecosystem could sustain humans entirely on its own. The $150 million effort was financed by Edward P. Bass, a Texas multimillionaire with an interest in ecology and conservation. The original endeavor at self-sufficient existence within the interconnected domes commenced in September 1991, when an eight-member team was sealed inside for two years. Among a number of problems they experienced were poor crop yields, leading to inadequate food supplies, and dangerously high carbon dioxide levels. The so-called Biosphereans often went hungry, and oxygen had to be pumped in to supplement air supplies. More controversy swirled around the administration of the project. There was considerable criticism from the scientific community because several of the Bio-sphereans were not well-credentialed scientists and because of an aura of secrecy--which was compounded by a lack of published data--maintained by the nonscientist management. Because of sharp internal disputes, many of the initial scientific advisers quit the project last year. This April, Bass took legal action to dismiss the top management. A nonprofit consortium--called the Biosphere 2 Research Group--was formed in July by project executives and Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., to set a new scientific course of action. One of its first activities was to commission white papers from independent scientists in various disciplines relevant to the areas of research that the facility is equipped to support. "A critical aspect of these papers is that they make suggestions for work that could be done only in Biosphere 2," explains Bruno Marino, a biogeochemist from Harvard University's department of earth and planetary sciences who joined as the new scientific director in August. "How could their [the white paper authors'] current research be expanded by the unique perspective that these facilities offer?" He adds that each white paper "might spawn many further proposals--the investigators could identify other people to carry on research here. We are not yet 100 percent sure what we are going to do." Marino, who wrote a paper on the topic of isotope biogeochemistry, hopes to find some common ground among the various white papers to help set an agenda for the future of Biosphere 2. While there are no set plans for the future, researchers involved do not anticipate another cycle of isolated residents at the facility. "I can see no reason to have 'Bio-sphereans' in there," says Wallace Broecker, a professor of geochemistry at Lamont-Doherty and a member of the executive committee of the newly formed consortium. "They've already proved the point [that they can survive]." Marino says the first step--even before any new research projects are initiated--will be to "unpack the data collected over the past 2H years" and fully understand how the ecosystems enclosed within the giant greenhouse have developed. In some cases, the advisers say, errors incorporated into the design and construction of the facility need to be rectified. For instance, Adey, who originally designed the miniature ocean, sees a "particularly strong need to redesign the model aquatic system." In a rush to complete construction, many important features of the original design were either modified or left out altogether, he says, resulting in technical difficulties-- such as destruction of pumps by plankton--as well as a "skewed outcome" in mimicking the natural ecosystem of an ocean. As a result of the changes, Adey, a marine ecologist, resigned from the original project but returned to take part in the reevaluation. He estimates that between six months and a year will elapse before new projects are set up. Adey concurs with Marino's view that the present system must be understood before proceeding with further experiments: "If we want to understand the effects of perturbing an environmental parameter within a system, we first have to understand the [existing] system." In order to correlate results from Biosphere 2 to Earth's own bio-sphere, Adey stresses, scientists need to gauge the modeling effects resulting from the difference in size extremely carefully. "Because of the dimensional differences, the other parameters--temperature, humidity, air composition--must be as close to the wild ecosystem as possible," he cautions. Marino and Broecker also point out the need for extremely rigorous controls in modeling experiments. "We have to create controls--to see what happens under 'normal' conditions," Broecker explains. Biosphere 2 scientists are not yet decided on whether the controls will be set up in new units or be incorporated into the existing facility. The scientists commissioned to prepare the white papers are calling Biosphere 2 a tremendous intellectual lure. Broecker's white paper is entitled "Elemental and nutrient models." In the document, he suggests a number of different experiments to describe past, present, and perhaps future processes in the Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and crust. He offers as one possible course of experimentation a study of the long-term effects of enhanced levels of carbon dioxide on various life forms. Another project he envisions is an attempt to analyze what he calls "the fattening of the bio- sphere," or "anthropogenic greening." "If we add up the total amount of carbon in [burned] fossil fuels and forests, it exceeds the amounts accounted for by the increases in atmospheric and oceanic carbon dioxide," he says. "Therefore there must be a carbon sink--which we believe is the terrestrial biosphere, including soil organisms and [standing] forests." The closed system of the biosphere, containing a miniature forest, is an ideal place to test the hypothesis, he contends. The artificial ocean has generated many ideas among the visiting scientists. Francois Morrell, a professor of environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is proposing studies into the organic and inorganic chemistry of aquatic systems, while Marino hopes to expand this into investigations of oceanic flora and fauna. "The research potential is great," Marino comments. "Right now [the ocean] is more like a harbor environment with severe environmental perturbations," observes Adey. "It could be a useful model of a coral reef." A possible project, he says, could be a study of the degradation of reefs in response to increasing carbon dioxide. One of the major priorities for Bio-sphere 2's patron Bass is the subject of ecology and the roles of different living organisms in maintaining an equilibrium, Broecker says. To this end, the new scientific directors commissioned several white papers in the areas of ecology and biology. For example, Graham D. Fahrquar, an environmental biologist at the Australian National University in Canberra has written a paper entitled "Plant biology and physiology"; Mary Firestone, a microbial ecologist from the University of California, Berkeley, is contributing her ideas in "Soil biochemistry and microbial ecology"; and Stanford University's Peter Vitousek, an expert in the area of biological diversity, has written a paper on "Ecological approaches to interaction between plants, soils and the atmosphere." In addition to basic research, Biosphere 2's new directors hope to utilize the facility as an educational tool, and efforts are already under way to establish such a program. Broecker envisions it as an "outdoor science museum, for young people to come and learn about the Earth's environment and ecosystems. "It is not a perfect analog for the planet," Broecker concedes, "but [it] comes pretty damn close, all things considered."

Under New Management, Biosphere 2 Explores Research Opportunities

Nov 27, 1994

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