ShareThisThe University of Arizona has unveiled Biosphere 2 as its newest laboratory, with ambitious plans for climate-change research and promises to bring a new era of scientific legitimacy to the unique but often-criticized terrarium.
Backed by a $30 million gift, the university will start two new scientific endeavors to take advantage of the 3.1-acre mini-world, as well as embark on an expanded public-education and outreach campaign.
"UA will develop Biosphere 2 into a center for research, outreach, teaching and lifelong learning about Earth, its living systems and its place in the universe," said Joaquin Ruiz, dean of the College of Science. "The facilities and resources at this new campus will be an inspiring place for researchers to gather and to tackle problems that science and society will face now and in the future."
Originally built for $200 million as an experimental self-sustaining environment, Biosphere 2 was sold for $50 million on June 4 to CDO Ranching & Development, L.P., part of a 1,658-acre parcel already approved for the development of 1,500 homes and a resort hotel.
The university will lease the Biosphere 2 campus, near Oracle about 35 miles from the UA campus, for $100 a year for three years, Ruiz said, with hopes of acquiring the facility afterward. The $30 million in operating expenses and research funding will come from the Philecology Foundation, led by Texas billionaire and Biosphere 2 creator Edward P. Bass.
"I salute the university's deep commitment to conduct research in the Biosphere that will advance our understanding of the Earth, its biosphere and the impact upon it," Bass said in a written statement. "Biosphere 2 was initially created as a tool to probe the essential environmental questions we must ask in the 21st century, and I look forward with great anticipation to what UA will discover."
Science Foundation Arizona President-CEO Bill Harris was the founding director of the program that Columbia University ran at Biosphere 2 from 1996 until 2003. Harris, who left Columbia in 2000, developed the $10 million surrounding campus and said he was frustrated that at the time he couldn't engage the UA in Biosphere 2 research.
"The good news is Columbia transformed the campus from what was once a huge curiosity to one that could focus on serious scientific matters," Harris said.
Science Foundation Arizona will likely fund some start-up research at the Biosphere 2 and also have involvement in K-12 education programs at the facility, which Harris called inspiring to young students.
"I don't think I've seen in my career anything that has impacted students as much as their time here. It turned out to be the transformational experience of their college careers," Harris said. "This is a tool of learning beyond anything else."
The UA's research programs will be split between B2 Earthscience, which will conduct the large-scale climate experiments, and the B2 Institute, an interdisciplinary think tank focused on "grand challenges."
B2 Earthscience director Travis Huxman, a UA associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, said Biosphere 2 solves one of the most fundamental problems facing Earth scientists, who can choose between working in highly controlled labs on a very small scale, or field research in which natural processes are influenced by factors scientists can't control.
"The problem is both of these methods fail at some scale," Huxman said. "The Biosphere 2 is an unprecedented instrument that solves this problem."
Despite its critics, Biosphere 2 has in its short history already changed what scientists know about the world, Huxman said. Columbia's studies involving the impact of carbon dioxide on coral reefs and rain forests have changed the way scientists approach the subjects. Even the failure to engineer natural ecosystems that could thrive in a sealed facility is a demonstration of Earth's unknown complexity, Huxman said.
(Contact reporter Eric Swedlund at eswedlund(at)azstarnet.com.)
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