Eco-Adventure Awaits: Top Tips for Your Biosphere 2 Visit

As a world traveler to over 35 countries, I have come to appreciate this planet’s diverse ecosystems. I have lived in the desert, photographed the Serengeti, and explored bamboo forests in Thailand. However, there is one place in Arizona where you can experience several ecosystems in the same place. Biosphere 2 is the world’s largest earth science experiment, conducting groundbreaking climate research with the University of Arizona. You can tour the 3.14-acre facility and see what is going on. Here is everything you need to know when visiting Biosphere 2.

Biosphere 2 Mission

Built-in the early 1990s, Biosphere 2, named after the first Biosphere, Earth, was created to study sustainability, climate change and how it affects ecosystems, and environmental conservation under closed ecological systems that would support and maintain human life in outer space. Researchers could alter climate conditions, such as temperature, drought, or atmospheric composition, and analyze the ecosystem responses within the glass enclosure. Besides the research, the facility provides continual learning and teaching.

On the Biosphere 2 self-guided tour, you will pass classrooms, see sustainable practices for collecting rainwater on the sides of buildings, and notice plants that have thrived under the dome for over 35 years. John Allen, co-founder and inventor of Biosphere 2, wanted people to see Earth, Biosphere 1, in a new light through the science, beauty, adventure, and hope for all humanity within Biosphere 2.

Biosphere 2 has had over three million visitors since 1991. Tours are available from 9 am to 4 pm for $29. You can get a discount if you purchase your ticket online. The self-guided tour lasts around 75 minutes. It is a complete walking tour that includes going up and down approximately a hundred stairs. Before you arrive, you can download the Biosphere 2 app on your phone, which allows you to follow the signs and learn more about each stop on the tour.

Biosphere 2 Design

The five zones, the human habitat “microcity,” and the organic farm were selected to represent the diversity of planet Earth. The roof heights for each zone were selected to allow air and rain to rise and fall as in nature (91 feet is the highest); sunlight was essential to the survival of all zones, and the habitats had to be somewhat separated so desert life would not relocate to the rainforest.

The space-frame construction is made of 6,500 strong panes of glass supported by a steel skeleton. The glass doesn’t allow any UV portion of sunlight through. The dome-like lungs were needed to equalize air pressure as the air inside the Biosphere expands under the sun’s heat; the domes did not provide or replenish any of the Biosphere’s air. Engineers created innovative ways of purifying air using soil and plant biofiltration. The first trial run was with three people for three days. It was a success, which led to the next phase…

Life Under Glass

On September 26, 1991, eight Mission One crew scientists were locked inside Biosphere 2 for two years. Their mission was to study and care for the uniquely designed ecosystems in the world’s largest self-sustaining closed ecological system ever built. The primary goal of the experiments was to see if humans could function in an artificial environment that recycled air, water, and waste and grow their own food supply while monitoring the interactions of all plants and animals.

The biomes studied were the rainforest, savannah, desert, mangrove marsh, and coral reef ocean. The two years within the dome showed how people, wilderness areas, farms, and technology were closely interconnected. While these eight brave souls dealt with a depreciation of oxygen levels, an increase in carbon dioxide, and a limited diet, people on the outside had their noses pressed against the glass, trying to get a glimpse of life under glass.

You can see more of what happened during those two years in the documentary “Spaceship Earth.” I have been fascinated with their story and even bought the book, “Life Under Glass.” I can’t imagine being locked up for two years; the only company is who you came in with.

Human Habitat

Part of the tour through Biosphere 2 takes you through the living quarters. The first thing you see is the kitchen area; then, as you walk a short way, you can look into their apartment. Each Biospherian, as they called themselves, had a private apartment with an upstairs bedroom and a downstairs living room. Their bathrooms had showers and toilets, but they had some constraints. They were limited in the shower time to conserve water, and there was no toilet paper anywhere, and the drinking water was collected from moisture produced by the plants.

In addition to the apartments and kitchen, there was a medical clinic, exercise room, laboratory space, recreation facilities, and a library. You must take a special tour to see the library at the top of the tower with no elevators on site.

African pygmy goats, pigs, and chickens were also the only domestic animals that entered Biosphere 2. These animals could eat parts of plants that humans couldn’t digest and provide eggs and milk, while their waste was used for composting and soil fertilizer.

Agriculture

The agriculture area/farm isn’t there anymore, but you walk right by where the crops grew under the three glass-arched domes. The closed system contained no ‘wastes’; all wastes contained valuable resources. Everything that came out of the soil had to be returned. The farm had to be highly productive at only half an acre. The farm produced 81% of what was consumed in the two-year mission, which was improved to 100% for the second crew in 1994 from the lessons learned.

The farm consisted of eighteen garden plots designed to produce three crops yearly. They planted beans, potatoes, and peanuts for protein, oats, barley, and rice to bake bread, and fruits such as pineapple, guava, apples, bananas, grapes, strawberries, oranges, and papayas were used to make juice and jam. Sugar cane was grown as a sweetener. The orchard now has a wooden pathway to proceed to the next area. Before you leave the habitat area, you’ll see numerous displays of the Biospherian’s experiments and photos of daily life.

Fog Desert

Part of the tour after leaving the orchard involves walking around the building to enter on the opposite side. The day I was there, it started to rain when we were in the habitat area, so we hurried around to enter the glass pyramid doors leading into the coastal fog desert. The wooden pathway takes you through a desert ecosystem, although the desert grasses have multiplied over the years since the Biosphere 2 experiment.

Mangrove Wetlands

The Mangrove Wetlands consist of two separate wetland areas: a small area of marshes dominated by grass species and forested swamps dominated by mangrove trees. Five hundred forty-two mangroves and 15 freshwater trees were added at the start of the experiment.

Did you know that Wetlands function as the Earth’s kidneys, absorbing and detoxifying potential pollutants?

Biosphere 2 wetlands were designed to treat and recycle all of the human and domestic animal waste produced. Today, you will see a variety of plants and trees, small streams, and even experiments in the works. As you wind through the towering trees, you head into the Savanna Grassland area.

Savanna Grassland

The Savanna was created to separate the desert and rainforest biomes. You can find numerous tropical trees and beautiful, colorful flowering plants here. An ongoing experiment about material performance and weathering in various climatic conditions is also occurring in this area. Researchers are comparing the results of rammed earth construction to traditional concrete construction. Rammed earth has a much lower carbon footprint with less cement and fewer emissions from transportation. This is one of many current experiments occurring within Biosphere 2.

Ocean with a Coral Reef

The million-gallon ocean was created to simulate a Caribbean Reef, even though it is a thousand miles from the closest ocean basin. It is also 3,800 feet above sea level with seasonal sunlight, not tropical. The 7-meter-deep reef environment slopes to a shallow lagoon leading to a sandy beach. Under the water, research was on coral reef resilience, where researchers could/can see how biological and chemical changes affect the coral. One of the ways they improved coral life was by using a vacuum pump to make waves instead of centrifugal pumps that can decimate marine microfauna and flora. After the two-year experiment, the ocean surpassed predictions, with 75% of the hard and soft corals surviving and reproducing.

Tropical Rainforest

Once you walk through the doors, you are greeted by a blast of humid air. You have just walked into the Amazon, or at least it feels like it. The rainforest covers a small area of 20,000 sq. ft., but it is packed to the ceiling with plants and trees almost 80 feet tall. Two thousand eight hundred plants from 400 species were originally added from Puerto Rico, Belize, Venezuela, and Brazil. Today, the rainforest has about 100 species of plants, including coffee and cocoa, and a few animals, like ants, cockroaches, snails, and spiders.

Research in the rainforest focuses on the interaction between plants and gases in the air and water. Scientists try to understand how plants process and release gases under changing atmospheric conditions and how plants may adjust their water uptake strategies during a controlled drought. Due to ongoing research, we couldn’t walk around the rainforest, but we stood there for a moment and soaked it all in.

Summary

The tour of Biosphere 2 was eye-opening. It made me appreciate all the engineering marvels involved in making this virtually airtight facility. The engineers and ecological teams worked together to create unique technical support systems that wouldn’t harm life. The two-year experiment within Biosphere 2 showed that today’s global society is learning too slowly about Earth’s finite natural resources. We must fit our behavior into a closed ecosystem, which is basically what Earth is. Earth doesn’t adapt to us; we need to adapt to it.

How can we meet our everyday needs, protect our wilderness areas, and keep our soils, waters, and atmosphere healthy? We need innovative technologies to recycle our water and grow food without harmful chemicals while maintaining soil fertility. Basically, we need to be smarter than we have been!

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Further Reading

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