30 YEARS of DISCOVER

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DV1010BIOSPHERE8A_QG 46 8/6/10 12:17 PM was one of the most lauded experiments of the 1990s, then one of the most ridiculed. Now it is back, offering a unique way to put theories about climate and environment to the test. By Jordan Fisher Smith Photographs by Douglas Adesko 47 10.2010

DV1010BIOSPHERE8A_QG 47 8/6/10 12:17 PM       , global climate and atmospheric change. In its later life, mesquite, and ocotillo southwest of Oracle, , “instead of trying to model utopia, Biosphere  would for less than  years, yet it looks decidedly aged. Its actually model dystopia—a future plagued by high car- skin is mostly glass and lacks window-washing tracks, bon dioxide levels,” wrote Rebecca Reider, author of a so the hundreds of panes had to be cleaned by workers de nitive history of the project. But while most research hanging on ropes like rock climbers. At one time seven on impending environmental disaster relied on com- Bpeople were employed to do this; today there are none. puter models, Biosphere  represented a fascinating The desert wind deposits dust on the structure and alternative mode in which large-scale analog experi- the rain washes it downward, forming parallel streaks. ments employed real organisms, soil, seawater, and air.  e rain forest inside pushes against the glass. In   e man behind Biosphere  was John Allen, a Colo- there were about  employees on the site. Less than rado School of Mines–trained metallurgist and Harvard a third remain. Dry leaves collect against the air han-  . In , after two hallucinogenic experiences on dlers by the main doorway; whiptail lizards skitter peyote, Allen looked out of the Manhattan o ce build- over the concrete paths, and javelinas trot around the ing in which he was working and realized he could grounds at night. A note on a whiteboard in the oper- not open the window. He felt trapped like a bug inside ating engineer’s o ce tallies the number of poisonous glass—an ironic epiphany for a man who would work so reptiles encountered on the site, which is greater than hard to seal up a handful of his followers three decades the number of maintenance people left to encounter hence. So he sailed from New York aboard a freighter them: “Rattlesnakes: .” and traveled the world, seeking wisdom. By  he The café is closed, the mission control building had become a self-styled esoteric teacher in Haight- deserted, and inside the row of clear plastic sheds Ashbury-era San Francisco, delivering weekly lectures where plants were readied for installation in the main to a group of mostly younger followers and cohabitants. structure, towering exotics—Panama hat palm, angel’s In  he and his students went to New York to set up trumpet—stand bleached and lifeless where they per- a theater company, and from there to , ished when the water was turned o . A monochrome where they started a commune near Santa Fe. If most monitor displays the last numbers it ever knew, burned such counterculture experiments yielded to entropy into its dead screen. On the shelf below is the  man- The eight and poverty, Allen’s Synergia Ranch is a notable excep- ual for the environmental monitoring system to which original tion.  e Synergians were a very hardworking bunch. it was connected. Nothing ages faster than the future. Biospherians on In   a lanky young Texan and Yale dropout named Constructed between  and  , Biosphere  was the first day Ed Bass wandered up the driveway to Synergia Ranch. of their two-year a . -acre sealed greenhouse containing a miniature mission: Like Allen, Bass had a strong interest in the environ- rain forest, a desert, a little ocean, a mangrove swamp, September 26, ment. Unlike Allen, he was the billionaire heir to an oil a savanna, and a small farm. Its name gave homage to 1991. fortune. Later that year Allen and his followers drove “Biosphere ”—Earth—and signaled the project’s auda- cious ambition: to copy our planet’s life systems in a prototype for a future colony on Mars. A May  article in  called it “the most exciting scienti c proj- ect to be undertaken in the U.S. since President Kenne- dy launched us toward the moon.” In  a crew of eight sealed themselves inside. Over the next two years they grew  percent of their food, something  has nev- er attempted.  ey recycled their sewage and e uent, drinking the same water countless times, totally puri ed by their plants, soil, atmosphere, and machines. It wasn’t until  years later, in , that  announced total water recycling on the International Space Station. At the end of their stay, the Biospherians emerged thinner, but by a number of measures healthier. Despite these successes, the media and the science establishment seized upon the ways in which the proj- ect had failed. Chief among these was an inability of Biosphere ’s atmosphere to sustain human life. As was true outside, the problem was signaled by rising car- bon dioxide. By  Biosphere  had passed into the hands of , and later the took over. Both used it to run scenarios of

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DV1010BIOSPHERE8C3,B5_QG.indd 48 8/6/10 10:30 PM an old school bus to Berkeley, California, where they Biosphere 2’s of human beings was to seed Earth’s life into space, built an -foot sailboat. None of them had ever built 91-foot-tall and  rst stop would be a working colony on Mars. even a rowboat. In  they began sailing the Hera- rain forest  e principals of the institute broke ground for Bio- contains more clitus around the world.  ey took her up the Amazon than 150 plant sphere  in January  . If some of them lacked aca- River, dove coral reefs in the tropics, and sailed her to species and demic quali cations for the jobs they held, they enlisted Antarctica to do research on whales. now provides real experts to execute the design. Walter Adey, a geolo- With John Allen’s big dreams and Ed Bass’s big scientists a test gist at the Smithsonian Institution, was in charge of the money, the Synergians began taking on bigger things. ground for ocean.  e rain forest was the domain of Sir Ghillean ecosystem  ey acquired a huge cattle ranch in Australia, started experiments. Prance, then director of the New York Botanical Gar- a sustainable forest in , built a hotel and den.  ese and other experts installed ,  species of cultural center in Kathmandu, and took on other proj- life inside, even as cranes lifted great sections of white ects in Nepal, the United Kingdom, France, and the superstructure into place overhead. The majesty and . Now calling themselves the Institute for complexity of the project entranced the press, touching Ecotechnics, they began hosting international meet- on myth and religious narrative, Rebecca Reider wrote. ings on ecology, sustainable development, and then Time called it “Noah’s Ark: The Sequel.” This created space colonization. At a conference in Oracle in  , expectations that would be hard to meet. Allen announced his plan to build a prototype Mars In September , four women and four men in

REUTERS/CORBIS colony on Earth before the decade was out.  e destiny NASA-style jumpsuits entered the air lock of Bio-

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DV1010BIOSPHERE8A_QG 49 8/6/10 12:17 PM sphere . Twelve days into the mission, Jane Poynter, surveyed the world’s hummingbirds to nd one with a a young Englishwoman in charge of the farm, put her bill the right shape to pollinate a variety of plants inside hand in a threshing machine while winnowing rice. the structure, and without a mating display predispos-  e group’s doctor sewed the tip of her middle nger ing it to fatal collisions with the glass. But Broecker and back on, but the graft didn’t take and she was evacu- his graduate student Je rey Severinghaus discovered ated for surgery. She returned in only a few hours that the culprits in the carbon dioxide problem were to serve out the two-year mission, but when she the tiniest organisms on board: soil bacteria. reentered the air lock, a du el bag was placed inside  e process of their subversion was respiration, with her. It contained nothing of substance, Poynter in which living things release carbon dioxide into said—some circuit boards and a planting plan for the atmosphere. Green plants absorb sunlight and the rain forest—but the media had a eld day with carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, making car- it, along with the fact that someone had left and then bohydrates and releasing oxygen, but they also do reentered, which couldn’t have been done on Mars. the reverse: Plants, too, respire (or breathe), burn- More ominous, signs of trouble with the internal ing carbohydrates to do work like making branches atmosphere began within  hours. Each morning and roots. In the soil around their roots, billions of the crew had a breakfast meeting over bowls of home- fungi and soil bacteria respire as well. In fact, the grown porridge in Star Trek–style chairs around a pol- greater part of all “breathing” in terrestrial systems ished black granite table. The morning after closure, goes on underground. the crew captain announced that carbon dioxide in Ever grand in their ambitions, Allen and his people Biosphere ’s atmosphere had risen to  parts per intended Biosphere  to be used by rotating crews for million, a  percent increase above levels outside at  years. Feeling they had one shot to invest their the time. By the following day, the lowest it went was world with life-giving nutrients, they had loaded their . Over the months that followed, the news at the soils with compost and rich muck from the bottom morning meetings got worse. Crew members were feel- of a cattle pond. (Agricultural chemicals used inside ing tired and began to pant when they climbed stairs. might end up in their air and water.) When the air locks In May  in Palisades, New York, geochemist closed, soil bacteria had a massive party, exhaling car- Wally Broecker got a phone call from someone at Bio- bon dioxide and tipping the balance the wrong way. sphere , asking if he would be willing to consult on As oxygen was converted to carbon dioxide, free their atmosphere. Since the late s, when he became oxygen in the atmosphere declined. By January , the Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Biosphere ’s carbon dioxide levels were  times that Sciences at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty of the outside, and oxygen levels were what moun- Earth Observatory, Broecker had been sounding the taineers get at , feet.  e crew’s doctor was hav- alarm about a buildup of carbon dioxide in the big ing trouble adding up simple gures and disquali ed atmosphere. An el sh presence with a dried-apple-doll himself from duty. So, a year and four months into the face and wild, tousled hair, he was already one of the mission, tank trucks containing , pounds of liquid great men of atmospheric-change research when he oxygen started driving up the access road to the site. crossed the George Washington Bridge for dinner with  e story of fresh-faced idealists getting taken down John Allen at a Manhattan restaurant. The meeting a notch played well in the media. For two years the had a cloak-and-dagger feel. Allen, a handsome, clean- glass walls of Biosphere  were lined with TV cam- shaven, broad-shouldered man who often wore a fedo- eras and tourists.  e crew’s lives turned into reality ra, reminded Broecker of Indiana Jones. By Broecker’s TV. In fact, the producers of the world’s rst reality TV account, Allen pro ered a graph of the gas composi- show, Big Brother, which aired in the Netherlands in tion of Biosphere ’s atmosphere, then nervously pulled , acknowledged Biosphere  as their inspiration. it back, as if someone else might see it. A week later True to reality TV’s typical plotline, months cooped Broecker  ew to Arizona and began collecting data. up together while struggling with their atmosphere Much attention had been focused on charismatic and hunger and being filmed by well-fed people led species when Biosphere  was put together. A biologist to squabbles among the Biospherians.  ey emerged from the air lock in September  in two groups of four who weren’t speaking. Organizational cracks opened between them and their advisory scientists Allen, in a fedora, and extended into their relationship with Ed Bass. Originally budgeted at  million, Biosphere  had reminded Broecker of already cost a reported  million. By the time a sec- ond crew took its place inside, Bass had had enough. On April , , his bankers, accompanied by carloads Indiana Jones. of armed federal marshals and sheri ’s deputies, swept 50 DISCOVER

DV1010BIOSPHERE8C3,B5_QG.indd 50 8/6/10 10:30 PM into the site with a restraining order. e second crew Isabel  feet thick, was collapsing into the Weddell Sea. e lingered inside Biosphere  for another five months Stubblefield next day Del Valle called for an aircraft and  ew over the and  days before terminating its mission. was a cook area. All that was left of the massive ice shelf were small during the Biosphere , it was widely reported, was a catastro- first two-year icebergs as far as the eye could see. “I cried because I phe. In , when Time did its  n de siècle summary mission at could see the future,” he said. at December, the Inter- of the th century, it included Biosphere  in its list of Biosphere 2. governmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the worst  ideas. She still greenhouse gases were rising, with human activity the works there. likely cause and dangerous changes in the earth’s condi-            , tions a likely result. Bass’s people began looking for a new entity to operate Joe Berry, a plant physiologist at the Carnegie Insti- the facility. Eventually they struck a deal with Colum- tution for Science, came to work with Broecker at Bio- bia University. e new director of research was Wally sphere  in . Berry, Guanghui Lin, Kevin Griffin, Broecker, who had coined the term “global warming” Bruno Marini, Barry Osmond, and others began a ict- two decades earlier. Here was a gigantic laboratory ing the little world with simulated droughts and a  ask with a whole tropical forest and an ocean inside high-CO atmosphere and measuring what happened it—models of what many scientists suspected were the in its rain forest and farm, now planted with rows of two biggest carbon sinks in the world. By , when cottonwood and poplar trees to simulate a commercial the deal was closed, Broecker was not alone in his forestry operation—a natural carbon sink. sense of urgency. As evidence of global warming increased, removing That January, Rodolfo del Valle, chief of Antarctic carbon from the air had become important in the world earth sciences at the Argentine Antarctic Institute, outside. Success hinged, in part, on understanding the received a distress call from colleagues at a research sta- feedback loops between photosynthesis and respiration tion adjoining the Larsen A ice shelf. e men were yell- on a global scale. As it stands, photosynthesis, which ing, and in the background Del Valle could hear a roar. takes in carbon dioxide, only slightly outstrips respira- e Larsen A, a sheet of ice the size of Rhode Island and tion, which releases it again. e di erence between

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DV1010BIOSPHERE8A_QG 51 8/6/10 12:17 PM for a Jimmy Bu ett music video than a professor.  e  rst thing Langdon set out to do was balance the chemistry of Biosphere’s ocean. It had gone acid, absorbing carbon dioxide from Biosphere ’s atmo- sphere and forming carbonic acid as a result.  is was happening on the outside, too, although it was a phe- nomenon biologists had largely ignored until then. “Of the carbon dioxide human beings put into the atmo- sphere from the burning of fossil fuels and deforesta- tion,” Berry says, “roughly a third remains in the atmo- sphere, a third goes into terrestrial ecosystems, and a third goes into the ocean.” As a result, Langdon says, the world’s oceans have fallen one point in pH since the Industrial Revolution.  at doesn’t sound like much, but pH is logarithmic. Today’s oceans are  percent more acid than they were a century ago. Langdon worried about the e ect on shell sh and coral. When seawater gets more acid, he explains, it holds fewer free carbonate ions. Corals and marine organisms that build shells rely on free carbonate for raw material. Biosphere  was the perfect lab; here was a little ocean in which, unlike the real one, acidity could be adjusted. By manipulating the acidity of the Biosphere  ocean and measuring the resulting growth rates in coral between  and , Langdon proved that ocean acidi cation from rising atmospheric car- bon dioxide would radically affect calcium carbon- ate–shelled marine life. He forecast that by , rates The intake and output—just  to  percent of the total car- of growth in coral reefs would decline by  percent. “south lung” bon going into ecosystems—accounts for the amount is one of of carbon  xed in things like the trunks of Biosphere ’s           two rooms that allowed cottonwoods. What would happen to this relationship, geochemistry, scale and complexity are important. In Biosphere 2 Berry and his colleagues wondered, as the world grew what are called microcosm experiments, plant physi- to breathe— warmer and more carbon dioxide was released? Pho- ologists study leaves in sealed containers so their gas and not tosynthesis was limited by the amount of carbon that exchange can be tracked, but that gives information explode— green plants could scavenge out of the air. But with only on the leaf ’s relationship to the atmosphere, not during its former more carbon dioxide present, would photosynthesis that of the whole plant, its soil, and other plants and life as a speed up, saving us all by  xing more carbon? animals. As the scale gets bigger, enclosed experiments closed What the scientists found inside Biosphere  was Iare referred to as mesocosms.  ere has never been structure. that when CO was elevated, plants photosynthesized an experimental mesocosm as big as Biosphere . more, but their leaves and roots and the soil bacteria However promising the facility was during the respired more as well. “Carbon just chased itself around Columbia period, grant applications and submissions the cycle faster,” Berry says.  ere was no net bene t. for publication from Biosphere  were undermined by Today soil respiration remains the wild card it was for the project’s bad press. Like dog feces on a shoe, the the Biospherians. Known to increase with warmer tem- project seemed to carry a whiff of something the big peratures, it could cut the carbon sequestration from grantors did not want in their portfolios. Although it did tree-planting projects to zero as soils belch out more get some small education grants from the National Sci- CO than what is stored in tree trunks and the like. ence Foundation, major government research agencies Meanwhile, in , Broecker invited Chris Lang- generally wouldn’t touch the place. “It was extremely don, a young marine ecologist at Columbia, to have a unfair,” Broecker says. In  the situation led new look at what could be done with the ocean. Langdon Columbia University president Lee Bollinger to jettison may have been the only person on his  ight to Ari- the project. Sta were given pink slips, and  lters were zona with dive gear. He hadn’t been spending much turned o in the ocean. Langdon’s corals didn’t survive. time in deserts; his research more typically had him For a while it looked as if Biosphere  would become on oceangoing research vessels. He showed up for a theme park at the center of a housing development. work in sun-faded T-shirts, looking more like an extra After Columbia walked out of its lease, Ed Bass sold Bio-

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DV1010BIOSPHERE8A_QG 52 8/6/10 12:17 PM sphere to the developer, and the University of Arizona DeLong is trying to learn how to create realistic rain in Tucson took over under a new lease. from a series of pipes and overhead sprinklers. That Today Biosphere is still open to visitors, a strange makes sense, since the university’s new research focus mixture of botanical garden, aquarium, and house for Biosphere is water: not just rain but runo , absorp- museum about the lives of the early-s Biosphe- tion by soil, use by plants, and evaporation.  e scales rians with slightly big hair and loose- tting clothes. under DeLong’s tables will record real-time changes in Roy Walford, the  rst mission’s doctor, described the water saturation while sensors in the air and the soil place as “the Garden of Eden on top of an aircraft car- record humidity, chemistry, and gas exchange. Arizona rier” in Reider’s book. Belowdecks are concrete gal- no longer runs Biosphere as a sealed facility. It now leries full of wind from rumbling air handlers, tanks, uses a “ ow through” system, in which air exchange pumps, and miles of cable and pipe. But aircraft carri- with the outside is allowed while sensors record the ers have sailors with scrapers and paintbrushes. Bio- movement of moisture and gas, enabling accurate sphere does not. Rust is becoming a problem. estimates of total mass exchange with the outside Down below there is also a cavelike aquarium with world.  e reason for the change is the cost of energy. viewing windows into the Biosphere ocean. Despite Biosphere is a greenhouse in the desert, and Colum- its murky appearance (“ e last time we could see the bia was paying as much as . million a year to cool opposite wall was ,” my guide tells me), the ocean it. According to the University of Arizona, energy costs is not dead. Bright tropical fish appear out of the under the new system are less than a third of that. emerald gloom and  it along the glass: yellow tangs, Back in the s, critics pointed to Biosphere as sergeant majors, doctor sh. No one has been feeding an example of private philanthropy pushing science them, says Matt Sullivan, the University of Arizona in wacky directions. But scientists who have worked molecular and evolutionary biologist who now pre- in this product of Ed Bass’s generosity see it another sides over the underwater portion of Biosphere . way. Wally Broecker, Joe Berry, and Chris Langdon, Remarkably, after nearly two decades of separation along with Columbia’s last director of research, Barry from the Paci c, Biosphere ’s seawater still looks like Osmond, and the University of Arizona’s present one, living seawater under the microscope. “ e chemistry Travis Huxman, continue to believe in the potential and the microbes suggest that it’s just another coastal of mesocosm research. In July , Langdon was in ocean,” Sullivan says. “I was shocked.” His specialty is Australia as an adviser on the Australian Tropical microbial life in oceans, and his particular interest is Ocean Simulator, currently in the works.  e Simulator the way that viruses drive the evolution and regulate will allow marine biologists to put ocean life through the activities of bacteria. If this seems like an obscure conditions they hope they won’t see outside, just as subject, it is of far more import to our future than it Langdon did at Biosphere .  e University of Arizona, sounds. “Ocean microbial photosynthesis accounts for meanwhile, has linked research at Biosphere with half the photosynthesis in the world,” Sullivan notes. projects that operate in the outside world. For exam- In May he landed a , grant from the National ple, Sullivan’s use of the facility was ancillary to the Science Foundation to study the role of viruses in an principal focus of his grant, which involves mapping oxygen-starved region of the real ocean. Sullivan has ocean viruses around the world. His NSF grant might been using the Biosphere ocean to develop newer, signal an end to Biosphere ’s big chill in academia.  e more accurate sampling methods for this task. university has put out  proposals in the last two years From Sullivan’s opaque tropical ocean, which still and believes some are recommended for funding. has a white-sand beach and palm trees at one end, I Now , John Allen still lives on Synergia Ranch in follow a path across the savanna and through the living New Mexico with several of Biosphere ’s builders and quarters to what was once the farm. All its crops and at least one of its  rst crew, who  ercely defend their earth are gone. Stripped to bare concrete, it resembles original vision for it.  eir research yacht, Heraclitus, a glass-roofed aircraft hangar. It is now the domain of a still plies the world’s oceans. Jane Poynter, who lost red-haired University of Arizona geologist named Steve the tip of her  nger in a rice thresher, married a fellow DeLong, who is working on a huge new mesocosm: crew member.  ey started a Tucson aerospace  rm, a three towering, sloping steel tables nearly  feet long contractor on NASA’s new Orion space capsule. Wally and  wide, upon which will be constructed arti cial Jordan Fisher Broecker still goes to his o ce across the Hudson from landscapes with underlying soil and plants. Embed- Smith, author of Manhattan. After all Ed Bass gave away, in  he was the book Nature ded in the supports will be the world’s most accurate Noir, was a park tied at number  in Fortune’s list of the  richest giant bathroom scale, capable of supporting million ranger for 21 Americans. He continues to fund research at Biosphere years before pounds and sensing changes of less than half a per- turning to nature . And Matt Sullivan, the ocean microbe researcher, cent. (At the time of my visit last spring, the technology writing. His work plans to run the lab while others collect viruses at sea has appeared in didn’t exist yet, and DeLong was working to develop it Backpacker and for him. He su ers from terrible seasickness and thinks with manufacturers of scales that weigh jetliners.) Men’s Journal. an ocean in Arizona is just  ne.

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