Experimental ecosystem and climate change research in controlled environments: lessons from the Biosphere 2 Laboratory 1996–2003

Abstract

It is clear from the project summaries below that the Biosphere 2Laboratory (B2L) delivered handsomely as a controlled environmentfacility for experimental ecosystem and global climate change research.Ironically, the short and medium term experiments with model complexsystems revealed that some of the most exciting and unexpected questionsinvolved carbon cycling in benthic and soil metabolism, the very sameprocesses that caused the first closed mission in the facility to fail,and eventually made the apparatus available for research. The effects ofelevated {[}CO2] on these processes in the marine and agriforestmesocosms was to stimulate flux and to reduce C-sequestration, byreduced carbonate deposition and enhanced metabolism of soil C reserves,respectively. The extent to which this and other themes that emergedfrom experiments were products of the initial conditions established inB2L model systems, or are general principles that prevail in naturalecosystems, remains to be seen.