How are geographers using Biosphere 2 to learn about ecosystems and enviromental change?

Answer 1

One concept unites Biosphere 2's diverse activities: the observation that human activity has been fundamentally changing the nature of the Earth as a system over the last several decades, and that these systemic changes are accelerating. Increases in CO2, changes in methods of managing land and aquatic resources, changes in the nitrogen cycle, and upward trends in global temperatures all remind us that when we start to think on a planetary scale about these changes, we need to understand, first, how the Earth works without human impact and then how this human impact modifies the natural variability of the Earth. Over the next century, how we understand the difference between the two carries enormous implications for both human livelihood and environmental integrity.

The terrestrial research ship

Columbia's management of Biosphere 2 as a research station, in some ways, represents an extension of methods that Columbia ecologists have long practiced in other fields. Earth scientists from Lamont-Doherty have done a great deal of work on oceangoing vessels; the enormous greenhouse known as Biosphere 2 is the land-based equivalent of a research ship, an advanced field station with analytic facilities that allow the scientific staff to comprehend the detailed features of an entire region. Terrestrial ecologists recognize the amazing diversity of the American Southwest, going from subalpine forests at the top of the Catalina Mountains--terrain with structural and functional similarities to something one would find in Canada--through the deserts of Mexico to the Sea of Cortez. These several hundred miles of varied terrain present extreme ecologic diversity, and Biosphere 2 replicates that diversity by including six different environments (tropical rain forest, savanna, thornscrub, marsh, desert, and ocean) in its different segments or biomes. Studying each biome as a separate system (each can be cordoned off with removable plastic curtains) or studying the Biosphere enclosure as a whole, researchers can conduct controlled experiments on a full- ecosystem level, placing each individual measurement--atmospheric water, CO2, plant growth, or any other variable--in its natural context.

Answer 2

To study the sun and how it effects the earths surface and atmosphere

Answer 3

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