SEEMS CRAZY TODAY, but in the 1980s the word ‘biosphere’ was not widely known; we often had to spell the word for people! ‘Sustainable’ was equally obscure. The reality that the global biosphere that evolved over billions of years was in fact the life support system for us humans, as well as for all other life on our planet, was not widely understood. Then suddenly, out of the blue, Biosphere 2 appeared housing many of the quintessential biomes of planet Earth: rainforest, savannah, desert, marsh/mangrove, and coral reef ocean. Not only that, but it was uncommon then, if not audacious, to have women as part of such an expedition team and certainly not in equal numbers with men, but our crew was composed of four men and four women. Everyone could relate to Biosphere 2 since it was a miniature version of their lives and world. Because it was so small, just over three acres (2.5 U.S. football fields or 1.5 soccer fields), it was easy to see how people, wilderness areas, farm, and technology are so closely interconnected.
Astronauts don’t have to look over their shoulder; nobody is outside the spacecraft watching their every move. In Biosphere 2, even when we were slogging through a muddy rice paddy, cleaning the underwater ocean viewing windows, or pruning vines in the rainforest to let more sunlight in for shaded plants, there might have been a crowd looking in with their keenly peering faces pushed up against the glass that separated our world from theirs. Captivated by the drama of real-time science and exploration, they encouraged us with their positive smiles and were proof that what we were doing was both new and necessary. We also observed the outside world with new eyes: as we were getting thinner on our low-calorie diet, weaned away from fast food while living off our organic farm, people outside seemed to be getting larger! It was an opportunity for us to learn again about our own Earth’s biosphere as we compared and contrasted the two while we learned from news reports that ecological problems around the world were getting worse. It was this comparison that helped fuel our resolve to successfully complete our two-year experiment in Biosphere 2 and provide some examples of how people take care of their biosphere when they realize it’s what is keeping them alive.
The challenges we faced within Biosphere 2 have since moved from small environmental circles to the front pages of global news reports. Today, we continually hear that natural resources are finite and that even vast reservoirs, like our atmosphere or ocean, can be imperiled by human action. Our aim in Biosphere 2 was to find a way to meet our needs, protect our wilderness areas, and keep our soils, waters, and atmosphere healthy. To do this, we needed innovative technologies to recycle our water, grow food without using harmful chemicals while maintaining the soil’s fertility, and when necessary, intervene to manage our atmosphere and preserve as much biodiversity as possible to enhance the system’s capacity for adaptation and resilience. Our approach in the design of Biosphere 2, such as selecting non-polluting technologies to support ecology, directly relates to our Earth’s biosphere because it too is essentially a closed system. That no one knew then if this was possible, made Biosphere 2 one of the most forward-thinking and daring experiments of its time.
Over the past two decades, we have continued to ‘digest’ and explore the unique journey we shared and have developed a greater appreciation of why Biosphere 2 was an important laboratory, as well as a life-changing experience for each of us. But Biosphere 2’s accomplishments and relevance to our current ecological crises have never been fully appreciated. Hence, the importance of this expanded second edition of Life Under Glass, because the urgency of biospheric thinking and action can no longer be delayed without deepening the ecological catastrophe already underway.
BECOMING A BIOSPHERIAN
Since the three of us wrote Life Under Glass before we completed the two-year experiment, we decided to leave the book’s original text largely untouched for its historical value. At the time, we didn’t have the final data on most of the research projects underway, but we wrote with the immediacy and urgency of a still unfinished and dramatic experiment. We hope some of the rollercoaster ride of joys, frustrations and, above all, our total immersion and connection to a living world, will touch your hearts and minds. Life Under Glass is a record of how we started to learn to be biospherians, a term we called ourselves as a crew of eight. We realized in the early days of the experiment that our role was to learn from our biosphere, and adjust our actions accordingly to support its vitality, ecosystem functions, and overall health. We did not enter Biosphere 2 having a model of how a biosphere works; we started on day one to learn together.
The eight biospherians followed individual life paths to get to the project site in Oracle, Arizona at what was originally intended to be a quiet, although daring, research endeavor. We joined a small cadre of other biospherian candidates; we worked on the ecological and technical design; we traveled to exotic field sites collecting corals, plants, and animals; we operated prototype systems and even helped with construction while training in the skills required to live inside. The project’s quick pace and high morale was familiar to NASA veterans of the Apollo Project who came to visit. Like them, we were not afraid of making mistakes. We were making history, attempting what was considered impossible. From the project launch in 1984, a research and development complex was soon built and operated to prepare for Biosphere 2. Breaking ground in 1987, hundreds of construction workers, glaziers, engineers, and specialists of all types worked at breakneck pace to complete that massive facility so that we could begin its initial shake-down mission in 1991.
Ultimately, eight of us were selected and coalesced to form a team for undertaking something that no other humans had ever attempted. We were going to be the first crew of the first human-made mini-biosphere for two years. It was a unique opportunity to study global ecology with us taking part as experimenters and part of a co-evolving sustainable living system. We had to carry out daily tasks that would enable our biomes to thrive, and us as well, for our breath, food, and health depended upon them. Although that was the goal of Biosphere 2’s first closure experiment, everyone, including us, understood that it might not be achievable. At early Project Review Committee meetings, the sessions concluded with key managers and consultants enumerating lists of challenges, and sometimes even nightmare scenarios they could envision. Biosphere 2’s initial closure experiment faced daunting odds and plenty of unknowns, but that only strengthened our resolve to figure it out and do whatever it would take to keep our world healthy and biodiverse - and us inside! Ready for anything . . . we hoped!
A LABORATORY FOR THE STUDY OF GLOBAL ECOLOGY
Biosphere 2 was designed as a new kind of ecological laboratory, one in which the fundamental processes of life as well as that of an entire system could be investigated. To accomplish that, the facility needed to be energetically and informationally open (like our global biosphere) and virtually airtight (materially-closed) so that everything could be tracked with great precision. The structure was hailed an engineering marvel because its engineers succeeded in accomplishing daunting goals. Crucially, this included an unprecedented leak rate of less than 1% a month despite more than 20 miles of seams on the space frame roofs that braced against an outside Arizona climate that varied from subfreezing in the winter to well over 100 degrees in the blazing summertime. If Biosphere 2 hadn’t been so tightly sealed, the decline in oxygen or the dramatic daily and seasonal fluxes in carbon dioxide couldn’t have been detected and accurately examined.
Biosphere 2 became an ecological icon, recognizable around the world. Its biomes were tropical (it did not include temperate or polar regions) and its wilderness systems were chosen accordingly to include the biological, chemical, and physical requirements that define each area. To achieve maximum diversity, both terrestrial and aquatic/marine mini-biomes were chosen along with differing ecosystems within each biome to enhance overall biodiversity. Project ecologists gathered about 3,800 species of plants and animals, plus uncountable microbes, fungi, and the other small-in-size but profoundly crucial microbiota in soils and waters that keep our global biosphere healthy and recycling. Because Biosphere 2 was vastly smaller than Earth, elements cycled faster. For example, there was a two to four day residence time of carbon dioxide in Biosphere 2’s atmosphere compared to many years on Earth. John Allen, the inventor of Biosphere
