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Mark Van Thillo calibrates a humidity sensor in the savannah.

CHAPTER 3

MONITORING THE ENVIRONMENT

“Biosphere 2 provides, for the first time, the possibility of conducting controlled, large-scale ecosystem ecology experiments. Modern Physics emerged when Galileo conducted experiments that yielded numerical data. Biosphere 2 provides a setting for the same type of transformation in ecology as occurred in physics.”

– Dr. Harold J. Morowitz, Robinson Professor of Biology and Natural Philosophy, George Mason University

OUR OWN EPA

IF THE CITY SEEMS SMOGGY, maybe you can drive out of it to the country. If it’s smoky near a factory, you don’t go near it unless you live or work nearby. Oil spills and nuclear plant leaks—well, they’re nasty, but maybe they’re far away and there are other things to worry about. But in Biosphere 2, this way of thinking would never do. In a small living system, it is vividly clear that everything we did had immediate and potentially devastating effects on our surroundings. So, we policed the environment, ever alert for anything that could pose a health threat to ourselves or to any of the other life forms. That meant paying especially close attention to the quality of air and water, the first of the critical life support elements to reveal the onset of pollution.

Part of the pre-closure preparations involved the formulation of ‘mission rules.’ These resemble the rules that might be outlined by an environmental protection organization. Among the guidelines were air and water temperature limits, the allowable concentrations of potentially toxic molecules or heavy metals in the drinking water or air, and the management of nutrient cycling. There were many unknowns, and many more partly knowns, in this process. After all, the guidelines can only be set by measuring the natural world in minute detail, the means of which have only just begun to be developed during the past few decades. In the case of specific air and water contaminants, the SBV research adopted the standard warning levels used by OSHA for industry, by EPA for the environment, and by NASA for astronauts. One of the long-term purposes of the Biosphere 2 experiment was to help develop better environmental guidelines for use everywhere.