Humans Are an Interpretive Species,

¶ … humans are an interpretive species, the way we look at data - what we include in our model, what we exclude -- can lead to varying interpretations of hypothetical results. This is also true when we use logic, but incomplete data, to make a prediction about something we think might happen in the natural world (Erickson, 2005, 94-8). This is what happened when a group of people wanted to learn more about the way organisms lived together, affected one another, and maintained or created life. After an initial investment of $150 million, a project named Biosphere 2 was built in the Sonora desert of Arizona, covering almost 138,000 square feet (Shea, 2005, 5-6).

Constructed between 1987 and 1991, Biospehere 2 was designed to explore the complexities within biological system that included five areas based on natural biomes. As well, the project proposed looking at agricultural areas and human/living spaces to uncover the manner in which humans interacted with nature, b oth positive and negative, and the way farming and technology affected natural processes. At the time, NASA was considering manned missions to Mars, and Biosphere 2 was also designed to explore the use of closed systems in space colonization (Nelon, Burgess, Alling, Alvarez-Romo, Dempster, Walford and Allen, 1993).

The project had two phases, the first lasting from September 1991 to September 1993. The idea was threefold: study how humans lived and interacted within a closed structure over time (designed also to see what long space flights might do to human psychology); study dietary effects using low calorie diets, and; set up a working and sustainable ecological environment that required little or no outside intervention. Agriculturally, the crops taken included banans, papays, sweet potatoes, beets, peanuts, rice and wheat. No toxic fertilizers or pesticides could be used in case any leeched into the environment. These products were designed to support a low-calorie, nutrient dense diet, designed to allow human physiology to adapt over time. During the first year, all crew experienced cravings and hunger, but during the second year because of greater food production, average caloric intake increased. When tested studies showed that the crew's metabolism became more efficient at extracting nutrients from their food; their blood serum cholesterol dropped, blood pressure dropped, and their immune systems were enhanced (Poynter, 2006).

To accurately reproduce ecolological systems some non-invasive animals were introduced (pigs, chickens, and fish). However, the strategy of species-packing had varying degrees of success, mostly because of unplanned influences from moisture condensation on the inner structure and glass, and the wild and unpredictable CO2 fluctuations. In factm, each one of the biomes varied slightly from planning. The fog desert became more chaparral; the savannah was seasonally active and if not managed, would produce too much carbon dioxide; rainforst and savanna tress suffered from weakness due to a lack of stress wood, normally a response to storms; the mangrove developed rapidly but less understory than a typical wetland; and, the corals reproduced but had to have human intervention to hand-harvest algae from the corals, manuplulating the calcium carbonate and pH levels to prevent the ocean from becoming too acidic, and to also install additional protein skimmers to supplement those already in place (Nelson and Dempster, 1996).

One of the most serious of the unplanned consequences was a combination of a wildly fluctuating set of CO2 levels and a decrease in oxygen. For instance, the oxygen measurment began at about 21%, but steadily fell over 16 months to 14.5%. Symptoms were prevelent enough to require the same kinds of injections one would get in high mountain climbing. The CO2, however, fluctuated daily probably because of a different manner in which drawdown during sunlight interacted with night respiration. The crew had to constantly monitor and tweak these levels, often by manipulating irrigation, cutting and storing biomass, and increasing or decreasing photosynthesis. Some thought that this unplanned fuxuation came about because of a series of microbial growth spurts in the soil (Marino and Odum, 1999).

The second stage of the experiment is what brought it to a close. It was scheduled to last from March 1994 to January 1995, but, because of a series of disputes between management, problems within the second crews dynamics, and members of the first crew violating the clsure rule, it was dissolved on September 6, 1994. Experts came into the facility and found that one ant species had almost dominated the ecosystem; wiping out the fertilizers, preying on birds, and more (Broad, 1996). Columbia University took over the project from 1995 to 2003, using it as a working lab for research on space flight research, planetary dynamics, and the effects of global warming (Arenson, 2003).