Biosphere II: an autonomous world, ready to go

Whole Earth Review, Summer, 1990 by Kevin Kelly

IN SOUTHERN ARIZONA, A BAND OF dedicated mavericks are quietly erecting the most gutsy science experiment since the days of the first moon landing. It's a brilliant, bold, hair-brained, and completely gonzo undertaking: A sealed, self-sustaining ark for human living. The Arizona group calls it Biosphere II, a bonsai version of Biosphere I, our Earth.

Small compared to Earth, this self-contained terraquarium is awesome at the human scale. Biosphere 11 [Bio2] is a gigantic glass ark the size of an airport hangar. Think of an inverted ocean liner whose hull is transparent, a greenhouse as big as a sports dome. Inside is wilderness. It's airtight to the outside. Sealed at the bottom, too, with a stainless-steel tray 25 feet under the soil to prevent seepage of air from below. In September 1990, eight volunteers - four men, four women - will walk through the airlocks and seal themselves in for two years. Inside there is a soaking-wet rain forest at one end, a desert savanna at the other, and a coral reef and marsh in the middle. Off to one side is an intensive-agriculture area where the eight will grow all their own food for two years. Like Noah's place there will be animals aboard: some for meat, some for pets, and some on the loose: lizards, fish, birds and bats roaming about the wild parts. There are honey bees, papaya trees, a beach, TV and a laundromat. The Biospherians las they call themselves) will recycle 100 percent of what they breathe, drink, and eat. For two years they will live in a closed mini-world, a dramatic surrogate of our home planet. They see Bio2 as a double-sided investigation: how to live off the Earth and how to live on the Earth. Who are these folks? A former theater group; beyond that they are not saying much. Will they wear clothes? Usually. Will there be sex? Maybe. Will there be babies? They claim not. What happens if it all goes to green slime? There will be lots of snails, and lots learned. What will they do if someone dies? Compost'em, goes the inside joke. Where does the money come from? It will cost about $100 million, a for-profit investment made primarily by Texan tycoon Ed Bass, who plans to recoup his money (and more) from the technological spin-offs, and from tourism to the site. There is a green faction within the Bio2 group that sees this experiment as an emblem of Gaian awareness, an icon with as much spiritual power as the image of the whole Earth from space. And there is a space-cowboy faction within Bio2 that sees this as a pragmatic step on a spiritual journey off the planet into the galaxies. Both spirits are really manifestations of the same metamorphosis best described by Dorian Sagan in his book Biospheres: The "man-made" ecosystems known as biospheres are ultimately "natural" - a planetary phenomenon that is part of the reproductive antics of life as a whole.... We are at the first phase of a planetary metamorphosis, a breaking of the biontic wave. By "biontic" I refer to a biont, a biological unit; by "wave" I mean the cresting and reappearance of individuality at a hitherto unsuspected scale: not of reproducing microorganisms, or plants or animals, but of the Earth as a living whole. . . . Yes, human beings are involved in this reproduction, but are not insects involved in the reproduction of many flowers? That the living Earth now depends upon us and our engineering technology for its reproduction does not invalidate the proposition that biospheres, ostensibly built for human beings, represent the reproduction of the planetary biosystem.... What is definitive success? Eight people living inside it for two years? How about ten years, or a century? In fact, biosphere reproduction, the building of dwellings that internally recycle all that is needed for human life, begins something whose end we cannot foresee. AT THE END of September, 1990, the first planetary seed pod will be launched. The following scenes depict its development as of February 1990. A biosphere is an evolving system of ecologies. A meta-ecosytem, if you will. The only biosphere operating until recently was the Earth - Biosphere One. Earth, as a biosphere, is materially closed 99.9 percent of all matter is recycled), and energetically and informationally open (sunlight pours in, and information comes and goes). Biosphere 11 likewise is materially closed and energetically open. Attempts to concoct an even smaller, portable biosphere have been only partially successful. The late Carl Folsum dabbled in making materially closed ecosystems in laboratory flasks. He called these ecospheres, and came up with dozens. Some, like these on display, are still living after 20 years. Unlike biospheres, ecospheres capture only a single ecology, leaving little room for ecological evolution. Mesocosms are another type of synthetic ecology. Mesocosms are scaled-down replicas of natural systems, but are not necessarily closed. A native wildflower garden could be thought of as a very open-ended type of mesocosm. Some exotic aquariums are sophisticated mesocosms. A mesocosm sealed like an ecosphere becomes a biosphere. Each one is an experimental lab for ecology. "The biosphere," says john Allen, a co-founder of the project,, "is a cyclotron for the life sciences." Seven biomes The rock wall in this picture separates two of the seven biomes enclosed under the glass canopy being erected. On top of the cliff will be the African thornshrub savanna; at the base of the cliff, the ocean with Caribbean coral reef. (An underwater viewing port is being constructed in the foreground.) Under the framework lies the future Baja fog desert. At the junction where framework shown is over the cliff, a waterfall drops to an Florida mangrove swamp. The water will come from a tropical cloud forest, out of the picture to the right; its highest point will be five stories tall. In the background are the domes of the agricultural area. And the seventh biome, an urban human habitat, will house Homo sapiens Americanus with conventional materials. Small-time plate tectonics Bio2 is the largest example of a closed, man-made living system. One of the smallest examples to date is the commercially available ecosphere (see WER #45). It holds a special combination of water, air, algae and living shrimp in a scaled glass globe. This one, sitting on ecologist Peter Warshall, s bookshelf, may, in a Gaian sense, be manufacturing land. On Earth, the deposit of sedimentary rock is in a dynamic equilibrium with the composition of the atmosphere, and the rate of life. Carbon and minerals circulate not only through air and water into life, but into land and rocks, and back again. In Warshall's ecosphere which has lain undisturbed for years), minerals are precipitated into a layer of solid crystals on the globe's roof. Warshall sees two lessons here. One is that Bio2 might expect to have troublesome mineral deposits accumulate on its glassy roofs. And second, that turbulence is an essential catalyst in ecology, although a somewhat costly" one to replicate in a man-made environment like Bio2. Bio-diplomacy "It's a sticky problem," says Bio2 ecologist Peter Warshall, here checking out a cactus. "It's a pretty impossible job to pick 100 living things, even from the same place, and put them together to make a wilderness."' Ecologists experience all the competitiveness rival organisms do while designing a biome. And as they bicker for water or sunlight rights, it's as if they were ambassadors protecting their borders from encroachments. I need as much fruit as possible dropped from trees for my turtles to eat," says Bio2 desert ecologist Tony Burgess, "but the turtles would leave none for the fruit flies, which Warshall's hummingbirds need. Should we have more trees for leftover fruit, or use the space for bat habitat?" So negotiations take place: If I can have this flower for the birds, you can keep the bats. Or open subversion, like the debate on whether the marsh-man should have his pick of sawgrass, which Warshall didn't like because it would invade the drylands. Warshall: "Oh, it won't make any difference because I'm just gonna plant taller elephant grass to shade out his stuff, anyway." The marshman retaliated by planning acacia trees, taller than either. Warshall is currently scheming a border defense of guava trees, which don't grow any taller, but grow much faster, staking out the niche early. Dirt first! The key to creating ecological regions from scratch is to have the right soil. The ecologists building the wilderness areas of Bio2 are of the school that says: soil makes the ecology. To have the kind of tropical rainforest you want, you need to have the right kind of jungle dirt. And to get that in Arizona you are probably going to have to make it from scratch. Take a couple of bulldozer buckets of basalt, a few of sand, and a few of clay. Sprinkle in the right microorganisms. Mix in place. in the wild, soils erode or build up, presenting a new soil composition on the surface. This is one reason why the variety of species will vary in one location over geological time, as the mix of species adjusts to new soils. In a highly erosive place like a desert, it is natural for stands of cactus to change in as little as 25 years. Without the turbulence of wind and storms, the soil of Bio2 will be in an enforced stability. Disturbing the atmosphere with your fingers