Summary
It is clear from the project summaries below that the Biosphere 2 Laboratory (B2L) delivered handsomely as a controlled environment facility for experimental ecosystem and global climate change research. Ironically, the short and medium term experiments with model complex systems revealed that some of the most exciting and unexpected questions involved carbon cycling in benthic and soil metabolism, the very same processes that caused the first closed mission in the facility to fail, and eventually made the apparatus available for research. The effects of elevated [CO2] on these processes in the marine and agriforest mesocosms was to stimulate flux and to reduce Csequestration, by reduced carbonate deposition and enhanced metabolism of soil C reserves, respectively. The extent to which this and other themes that emerged from experiments were products of the initial conditions established in B2L model systems, or are general principles that prevail in natural ecosystems, remains to be seen.
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Osmond, B. (2005). Experimental ecosystem and climate change research in controlled environments: lessons from the Biosphere 2 Laboratory 1996–2003. In: Omasa, K., Nouchi, I., De Kok, L.J. (eds) Plant Responses to Air Pollution and Global Change. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/4-431-31014-2_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/4-431-31014-2_20
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