The Biosphere II

Touring the Biosphere II / November 16, 2013

 

The first time Curtis visited the University of Arizona, he and his parents came to tour the Biosphere II. Since we had planned to find some letterboxes and explore around Oracle, Arizona, we decided to take a tour here together. We arrived in the morning and reserved our spots on the next tour. Here are some pictures of our tour — we found it very fascinating and are so glad we visited!

We walked around the outside before taking the tour to find some letterboxes. The buildings looked pretty cool from all around the outside — and the inside as well! It’s so hard to believe that there were actually people living inside there for so long!

After watching a short film, we began our tour walking through the Biosphere. The tour took us through all the different climates. While it was designed for people to live on the inside, it now serves as a research facility for university students.

The above pictures are walking through the rain forest. It was amazing how humid it felt in that room.

This is the ocean they created.

 

Looking out of the windows towards the Catalina Mountains.

 

 

Pictured above is the desert. Yes, even though they’re in the middle of the desert, they had to create their own little desert inside!

 

 

 

 

After walking through the different ecosystems, we toured the “behind the scenes” side to things.

 

We also learned about the people that volunteered to participate in this experiment. The first group lasted an entire year inside the Biosphere II. However, the second group quit the mission after only a month. The reason for this was because researchers discovered that they were spending so much time trying to grow their own food and not harvesting enough. This lead to them feeling weak and unable to perform any other research while inside.

There are still experiments going on inside, but the Biosphere is always open for tours. They also have good student discounts!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that was our experience touring the Biosphere! Read about the rest of our day touring Oracle, AZ here.