Get Ecosystems And Biomes Testing For Oxygen And Carbon Dioxide

Oxygen helps the body's cells function normally. The cycle of carbon dioxide and oxygen on Earth is dependent on plants and animals. Plants provide the oxygen that animals and other living things need to survive. Animals and other living things provide the carbon dioxide that plants need to make their own food.

Plants are autotrophs, which means they produce their own food. They use the process of photosynthesis to transform water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide into oxygen, and simple sugars that the plant uses as fuel. These primary producers form the base of an ecosystem and fuel the next trophic levels.

The failure, say several of Biosphere 2's current staff, lay in the lack of transparency—not the lack of oxygen. Scientists did, in fact, learn something important from what went wrong: the soil was too rich in organic matter, and its thriving bacteria gobbled up too much oxygen.

Contained within a magnificently designed air-tight glass and steel frame structure, Biosphere 2 covered three acres of Arizona desert and included models of seven biomes: an ocean with coral reef, a marsh, a rainforest, a savannah, a desert, farming areas and a micro-city.

Water is necessary for photosynthesis, which is how plants use energy from the sun to create their own food. During this process, plants use carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from the water absorbed through their roots and release oxygen as a byproduct. This exchange occurs through pore-like stoma on the leaves.

The $150 million chamber was ready for business in 1991. These were the big questions that Biosphere 2 was built to answer. In 1984 construction began on the world''s largest isolated environment. The location was the Sonoran Desert, a short distance north of Tucson in Arizona.

They made their way to a looming monument of geodesic domes and pyramids known as Biosphere 2. The three-acre complex contained a miniature rain forest, a mangrove, a desert and a coral reef — along with seven people who had been sealed inside for a month.

Biosphere 2, the largest and most biodiverse closed ecological system facility yet created, has contributed vital lessons for living with our planetary biosphere and for long-term habitation in space.

The biosphere is a system characterized by the continuous cycling of matter and an accompanying flow of solar energy in which certain large molecules and cells are self-reproducing. Water is a major predisposing factor, for all life depends on it.