gases and global climate change were not the front page issues that they are today due to decades since of accelerating man-made impacts. Yet back then, we were studying the cycles of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide in Biosphere 2 as a normal atmospheric aspect of any living system. As we recount in the following chapters, one of the greatest challenges we faced was preventing a runaway rise in carbon dioxide from soil respiration and the imbalance with photosynthesis as Biosphere 2 began with small plants and trees, our initially “bonsai biosphere.” During those first two years, our plants doubled their biomass and a few years later, our soils reached more stable levels of organic matter. From necessity and with ingenuity, we developed numerous ways to help control our CO2 production and demonstrate how humans can become involved in managing the atmosphere and cooperate with natural systems, which have the capacity to sequester (store) and recycle these gases.
Perhaps it was inevitable that Biosphere 2 would become controversial once it surprisingly became headline news. To our dismay, even during our two years inside, the facile and endlessly repeated media story was to recount the problems and surprises of the first closure experiment and declare “Biosphere 2 is a failure.” Some even claimed Biosphere 2 was intended to be a substitute for taking care of Earth’s biosphere. On the contrary, Biosphere 2 showed us how irreplaceable our global biosphere is and underlined the necessity for humanity to co-evolve with it and become its stewards, not its destroyers. And with time, it became painfully obvious to the eight of us that most media reporting missed a most crucial point: it was above all else an experiment. We built Biosphere 2 not to demonstrate what we knew but to find out what we didn’t know, to learn from our mistakes and what the facility, with its complex ecological systems, would teach us.
Because it was cutting edge science, it was bound to step on toes, but who and what did it challenge? We inadvertently found ourselves in the middle of an ongoing fight among scientists. Some small-scale reductionist scientists literally couldn’t understand the systems level, holistic science of Biosphere 2. Arrogantly, they declared it not science at all! Worse, though, they perceived us as outsiders, mavericks, and not properly credentialed to undertake this project even though we had many world-class scientists, engineers, and institutions working with us to design and operate the facility. The fact that Biosphere 2 was privately funded and created outside the normal channels of government and university science grants, is the reason that the project moved so quickly. That independence allowed us to build a capable team and carry out the entire program which included the design, construction, and operation of Biosphere 2 for a price less than NASA would have spent just making the blueprints (as Joe Allen, a friend and NASA astronaut, told us).
The two-year Biosphere 2 experiment set world records for living inside a closed ecological system, eclipsing the six months that our Russian friends and collaborators had achieved in the most advanced experimental life support facility, Bios-3 in Siberia. That system imported some food and exported solid wastes. Biosphere 2 was the first closed ecological system that provided a complete balanced diet including animal products (meat, eggs and milk) and successfully treated and recycled all human wastes.
BIOSPHERE 2 FUNCTIONED AS A SEPARATE LIVING WORLD
What is astonishing, given the level of unknowns, is just how well Biosphere 2 did function and how successfully the ecological systems and technosphere meshed. There were surprises: the oxygen decline that no one predicted, or the fog desert that changed to more chaparral dominance; but perhaps the greatest surprise was how ecological zones in every biome remained largely intact. The coral reef, our greatest biomic challenge, which struggled with bleaching, coral disease, algae overgrowth, and lowered pH, surpassed all expectations. Only one hard coral species out of thirty-four was lost and 86% were considered to be in fair to excellent health at the end of the two-year experiment. The system as a whole functioned as a natural coral reef. The mangroves thrived, more than doubling in height, though understory species declined. The rainforest grew up rapidly and fulfilled the planned ecological succession: the fast-growing first canopy trees and ginger belt on all sides protected the more light-sensitive, mature rainforest species from the harsh Arizona sunlight. The ecological self-organization of these biomes provides lessons for ecological restoration of damaged ecosystems in the Caribbean, Amazon, Everglades and elsewhere around the world.
When we left, our world was lush, vibrant and remarkably diverse. The feared algal soup, mass extinctions, or merging of biomes into one weed-dominated ecosystem never even remotely occurred. When we stepped out of Biosphere 2 and experienced such contrasting air, smells, sounds and the sight of the distant horizon in the Arizona Sonoran desert, we knew that the project had succeeded. We had indeed been living in a very different world and we palpably experienced the differences between the two with our first breaths of Earth air.
THE HUMAN DRAMA: LIVING WITH JUST SEVEN OTHER PEOPLE
Our greatest challenge was ourselves, humans, both within the experiment as well as outside. The 1991 to 1993 Biosphere 2 closure was a human isolation experiment that had never been done before. Boldly, the crew signed up for the two-year journey knowing that this would be a formidable feat of endurance and without a doubt we would face challenges, both personally and collectively, that were unpredictable. We had worked together prior to closure for many years, we knew each other well, but we also knew that the isolation and dramatic change in our day-today living would challenge us in ways we had never experienced before.
The experience of the small teams that spend winters in Antarctica, expedition teams, submarine crews as well as astronauts and cosmonauts confirmed that us-them divisions are common in exploration. Once a group of space station cosmonauts, annoyed at Mission Control, cut off radio contact for 24 hours; no questions were asked when they resumed talking to the people on the ground. Another cosmonaut described the extremely tight living conditions of the spacecraft he shared with two other people and dryly noted: “a perfect recipe for homicide!” Fortunately for us, our isolation experiment included wilderness areas, where we could drop out of sight of visitors and other crew alike, as well as spacious private bedrooms and public spaces.
Dr. Oleg Gazenko, Director of the Institute of BioMedical Problems in Moscow and confidant of generations of cosmonauts, was part of the Biosphere 2 Scientific Advisory Committee. He was most interested in the human dimension of Biosphere 2 and spoke with us during and after the experiment. He observed us closely and concluded that the biospherians had done far better than the cosmonauts in adjusting to our new environment, as evidenced by our feeling of freedom and ease with living inside. While some of us quickly adapted physically, feeling in sync with the rhythms of Biosphere 2, by the spring of the second year all eight of us experienced the shift as a team. We had become the Biosphere 2 team and our actions were relaxed, empowered, and coherent.
Dr. Gazenko also underscored the importance of the ethical standards of the Declaration of Helsinki, which requires that human research subjects be repeatedly given the right to leave an experiment at any time. While not a legally binding agreement, but an ethical one, it formed a fundamental experimental guideline for both Mission Control and all eight biospherians. Periodically, we came together to review our commitments individually and collectively. We all agreed that it was by our own choice that we took part in the Biosphere 2 experiment, but we retained the right to leave at any time. This also encouraged us to accept responsibility for difficult times since we all agreed to participate and work together.
Later, during the transition period after our closure was over, most of the bio-spherians reported that for weeks they felt more comfortable working inside the facility than outside. Psychological tests taken while we were still inside, in addition to private interviews held by the head of University of Arizona Medical School’s psychiatry department, showed we were psychologically healthy, with nearly identical profiles amongst both men and women biospherians that closely matched those of other explorers, such as astronauts. One psychologist even told us if he was lost in the Amazon and needed help getting out safely, the eight of us would be his first choice!
