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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBiosphere 2 is a research facility located near Tucson, Ariz. Credit: Katja Schulz\/Flickr, CC BY\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
From a distance,\u00a0Biosphere 2<\/a>\u00a0emerges from the cacti and creosote of the Sonoran desert like a gleaming oasis, a colony of glass and bright white structures. Despite being just outside Tucson, Arizona, it looks almost like a colony on another planet.<\/p>\n When one of the facility\u2019s 100,000 annual visitors steps inside, they see a whole world \u2013 from a tropical rainforest, glistening in 50 shades of green and teeming with life, to a miniature, experimental ocean. Toward the end of the tour, the visitor comes to a comparatively barren-looking experiment called the\u00a0Landscape Evolution Observatory<\/a>, where life is struggling to establish itself on crushed volcanic rock originally spewed from an ancient Arizonan volcano.<\/p>\n It is these rock slopes, where life is colonizing and transforming a tough landscape, that our team thinks are the key to humanity\u2019s future \u2013 both on Earth and, eventually, on other worlds.<\/p>\n Biosphere 2 first became famous as the\u00a0human experiment of the 1990s<\/a>\u00a0that sealed a group of eight researchers inside its 3 acres of diverse ecosystems for two long years. The goal was to experiment with the viability of a closed ecological system to maintain human life in outer space. Today, we \u2013 a\u00a0global change ecologist<\/a>, an\u00a0astronomer<\/a>\u00a0and a\u00a0doctoral student<\/a>\u00a0specializing in microbial biogeochemistry, along with our team of colleagues \u2013 have made Biosphere 2 into a test bed for understanding how life transforms landscapes, from local areas to whole planets.<\/p>\n We hope to use what we learn to help preserve\u00a0biodiversity<\/a>, access to\u00a0fresh water<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0food security<\/a>. To address these issues, we must understand how soil, rocks, water and microbes together drive the transformation of landscapes, from local to planetary scales.<\/p>\n Beyond Earth, these same principles apply to the\u00a0challenge of terraformation<\/a>: the science of rendering other worlds habitable.<\/p>\n How life on Earth affects the Earth<\/p>\n Life doesn\u2019t just sit on the Earth\u2019s surface. Organisms profoundly affect the planet\u2019s geology, as well as the atmosphere\u2019s composition. Biology can transform barren environments into habitable ecosystems.<\/p>\n This happened with the\u00a0evolution of cyanobacteria<\/a>, the first microscopic organisms to use oxygen-producing photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria pumped\u00a0oxygen into the atmosphere<\/a>\u00a02 billion to 3 billion years ago.<\/p>\n Atmospheric oxygen, in turn, enabled a new supercharged metabolism of life called aerobic, or oxygen-using, respiration.\u00a0Aerobic respiration<\/a>\u00a0produced so much energy that it became the dominant way for organisms to make the energy needed for life, eventually making multicellular life possible.<\/p>\n In addition, the oxygen produced by photosynthesizing cyanobacteria also made its way to the upper atmosphere, forming another kind of oxygen\u00a0known as ozone<\/a>, which, by shielding the Earth\u2019s surface from sterilizing ultraviolet radiation, allowed life to expand onto land.<\/p>\n Biology again transformed the planet when the life that expanded onto land 400 million years ago gave a biological boost to the\u00a0chemical and geological process known as weathering<\/a>. Weathering occurs when carbon dioxide in the atmosphere chemically reacts with material on Earth\u2019s surface \u2013 such as rocks, minerals and water \u2013 to create soils imbued with nutrients that can support plants and other living organisms.<\/p>\n On Earth, weathering was first driven by purely physical and chemical processes. Once plants expanded from the oceans onto land, however, their roots injected carbon dioxide directly into the soil where weathering reactions were strongest. This process\u00a0sucked carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere<\/a>. Lower carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere then cooled the Earth, turning\u00a0a hothouse planet<\/a>\u00a0into one with a more temperate climate, like the one enjoyed by life today.<\/p>\n How organisms colonize new landscapes<\/p>\n When life colonizes a new, previously barren landscape, it starts up the process of\u00a0primary succession<\/a>. In this process, the first biological organisms \u2013 simple microbes \u2013 expand into interacting communities made of different kinds of organisms, which increase in complexity and biodiversity as they change and adapt to fit their new environment.<\/p>\n These microbes\u00a0react with the air and rock<\/a>\u00a0through photosynthesis and respiration to produce organic molecules called metabolites. The metabolites can alter the soil, allowing it to support larger plants. The larger plants that then emerge have complex structures such as roots and leaves that regulate the flow of water \u2013 and contribute to weathering. Eventually, humans can domesticate some of these plants for food crops.<\/p>\n Biosphere 2\u2019s Landscape Evolution Observatory is ideal for the careful study of how weathering and primary succession work together. Those processes both happen at the small, molecular scale but emerge as important only over large areas.<\/p>\n The Landscape Evolution Observatory has both hillslopes larger than any experiment in the world and crushed rock soils that are more simple and uniform than almost any natural setting. These characteristics mean the molecular measurements are consistent and understandable, even in different places across the larger hillslope.<\/p>\n The observatory is made up of three hillslopes covering 300 square yards that look like three giant tray-shaped, inclined planters made of steel, filled with crushed rock instead of fertile soil. The rain that falls on them soaks into the surface and flows down the incline to dribble out along the lower edge, where it is captured and carefully measured for its chemical and biological content.<\/p>\n We are using biological tools to understand how microbes and simple plants end up spreading across the larger, originally bare, crushed-rock hillslopes. These techniques include\u00a0metagenomics<\/a>, which can identify all the microbial life forms in a hillslope, and\u00a0metabolomics<\/a>, which can look at the organic molecules that microbes and plants produce and use in their interactions with each other and their surroundings.<\/p>\n Putting this all together, we see that colonies of photosynthesizing bacteria initiate succession on the Landscape Evolution Observatory. Critically, these cyanobacteria \u2013 descendants of those same organisms that gave Earth oxygen \u2013 capture the essential nutrient, nitrogen, from the air. Nitrogen buildup paves the way for mosses \u2013 simple plants without roots \u2013 to join them.<\/p>\n These bacteria-moss communities are now gradually spreading across the observatory\u2019s hillslopes, preparing the way for the next phase: colonization by larger plants with roots.<\/p>\n By learning how life establishes itself and then thrives on lifeless landscapes, we will gain insights for addressing key problems scientists face today. For example, when life-forms in a new landscape successfully spread and diversify, they tell us how biodiversity is preserved.<\/p>\n When those spreading organisms transform the way a landscape uses water, they give us lessons on how we should use water. And when plants find a way to be productive under stressful conditions, they give us examples for increasing our own plant-dependent food security.<\/p>\n Implications for Mars<\/p>\n Earth isn\u2019t the only planet where we can apply our findings. Today, Mars, unlike Earth, is a barren,\u00a0lifeless desert<\/a>. But it was once warmer, wetter and, like the early Earth, it may have\u00a0hosted primitive living organisms<\/a>\u00a0several billion years ago.<\/p>\n While the rock in the Landscape Evolution Observatory comes from an Arizona volcano, basalt is the same kind of rock found on the surface of the Moon and Mars.<\/p>\n Countries such as the\u00a0United States<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0China<\/a>\u00a0plan to land humans on Mars, and the company\u00a0SpaceX<\/a>\u00a0has grandiose plans to send a million colonists there. If humans ever hope to grow plants on the red planet\u2019s surface, learning how to create early succession there will prove crucial.<\/p>\n Before Mars colonization can happen at a large, sustainable scale, the first step is to grow plants and create food for human life. That is, we must solve what might be called the \u201cMatt Damon problem,\u201d after the actor in the movie \u201cThe Martian.\u201d In order to survive, his character had to quickly learn to\u00a0grow food crops<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 potatoes \u2013 on Mars.<\/p>\n Matt Damon\u2019s character would probably not have survived on the real Mars of today, because its rocklike surface,\u00a0called regolith<\/a>, is too full of salts and\u00a0toxic chemicals such as perchlorate<\/a>\u00a0for potatoes, or most Earth-like plants, to grow.<\/p>\n At the Landscape Evolution Observatory, we are focusing on experiments in chambers that simulate martian environments to ask what it will take to detoxify Mars-like soils so that microbes and plants can live there.<\/p>\n One initial approach is to use\u00a0perchlorate-reducing bacteria<\/a>, recruited from extreme environments on Earth, to convert the perchlorate into harmless chloride.<\/p>\n In this way, experiments at Biosphere 2 are informing the science of\u00a0terraforming Mars<\/a>. Together with progress made in other areas, such as finding ways of\u00a0making Mars warm enough to sustain liquid water<\/a>, restoring barren environments on Earth could be a key to one day living on Mars.<\/p>\n Scott Saleska receives funding from National Science Foundation, NASA, and U.S. Department of Energy.<\/p>\n Ghiwa Makke receives funding from National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy.<\/p>\n Chris Impey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.<\/p>\n This article is republished from\u00a0The Conversation<\/a>\u00a0under a Creative Commons license. Read the\u00a0original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/The-Landscape-Evolution-Observatory.avif\")
The Landscape Evolution Observatory at Biosphere 2 contains crushed basalt rock extracted from a volcanic crater. Credit:\u00a0Daniel Oberhaus\/Wikimedia Commons<\/a>,\u00a0CC BY-SA<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/NASA_Journey_to_Mars_and_The_Martian__201508180010HQ.jpg\")
Actor Matt Damon, who stars as NASA Astronaut Mark Watney in the film \u201cThe Martian,\u201d participates in media interviews, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2015, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In the film, Damon\u2019s character had to figure out how to survive Mars\u2019 inhospitable environment.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1759782128_553_count.gif\")
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