9: Planning an Artificial Ecosystem
Ecosystems are extremely complicated with many links between producers, consumers and decomposers. A complex web of cause and effect relationships.
The Australian Ecosystem was managed carefully for millennia by Aboriginal people. Read about how they did it here (Korff, 2015).
Teachers: Lesson Plan on Ecosystem Imbalance in the World from National Geographic (National Geographic Education, n.d.)
Find out how humans have impacted on Earth’s ecosystems, knowledge we will need to use for life on another planet so we don’t make the same mistakes twice!
Artificial Ecosystems: Biosphere 2
Biosphere 2 is a University of Arizona owned project that aims to promote thinking across all the sciences as to how the ecosystem of Earth works and how humans affect it. It aims to act as a tool to inform industry, government and the public about Earth planning systems and management. I’m sure you can see how the work that is done here will be invaluable when moving humans to another planet.
- Catalyse interdisciplinary thinking and understanding about Earth and its future;
- Be an adaptive tool for Earth education and outreach to industry, government, and the public;
- Distill issues related to Earth systems planning and management for use by policymakers, students and the public (Biosphere2, 2015).
It contains an impressive array of artificial systems that aim to see if humans can recreate the conditions for life:
- Ocean with coral reef
- Mangrove wetlands
- Tropical rainforest
- Savannah grassland
- Fog desert
Two missions, between 1991 and 1994, sealed Biospherians inside the glass enclosure to measure survivability.
Watch Jane Poynter’s TED Talk to hear about what it was like to live in there for two years (Poynter, 2009)
off the planet 