Mark Nelson

Wastewater Gardens (WWG) systems are complete wastewater treatment plants (STP or WTP) using high biodiversity subsurface flow constructed wetlands (CW). Our work began in Biosphere 2, where CW completed water cycles, returned nutrients to fertile farm soil, produced fodder and habitat. Since, the WWG approach has been applied in 15 countries inclu...

The Eden in Iraq Wastewater Garden is a water remediation project in southern Iraq which incorporates cultural and environmental art and treatment constructed wetland design. The facility will provide urgently needed treatment of human wastewater to improve residents’ access to healthy water and prevent contamination of groundwater and the water of...

Biosphere 2, the largest and most biodiverse closed ecological system facility yet created, has contributed vital lessons for living with our planetary biosphere and for long-term habitation in space. From the space life support perspective, Biosphere 2 contrasted with previous BLSS work by including areas based on Earth wilderness biomes in additi...

The Biosphere 2 project, a 1.2 hectare materially-closed mini-biosphere which supported teams of biospherian crews from 1991-1994 provides a host of ecological and human-biosphere lessons relevant to our global biospheric challenges. Because of its high visibility through worldwide media coverage, the project advanced public understanding of what a...

exploration of the scientific traditions and context of the Biosphere 2 project

Lessons from Biosphere 2; scales of science; going past "taboos" in science

Pushing Our Limits is a fresh examination of Biosphere 2, the world's first man-made mini-world, twenty-five years after its first closure experiment. Author Mark Nelson, one of the eight crew members locked in the enclosure during the 1991-1993 experiment, offers a compelling insider's view of the dramatic story behind Biosphere 2. Biosphere 2 hel...

A highly diverse plant community in a constructed wetland was used to investigate an ecological treatment system for human wastewater in an arid climate. The eight-year operation of the system has allowed the identification of a highly adapted and effective plant consortium that is convenient for plant-assisted metaremediation of wastewater. This c...

The Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) concept proposed by GEO BON, Space Agencies, and the Earth Observation research community at large aims to support efforts for biodiversity monitoring. GOFC-GOLD and GEO BON propose a new sourcebook to promote the best operational monitoring practices for the relevant EBVs based on scientific literature, a...

Authors In addition to the core editors, a number of international experts in remote sensing, and biodiversity field measurement have contributed to the development of the Sourcebook and are thankfully acknowledged for their support. This Sourcebook is the result of a joint voluntary effort from more than 70 contributing authors from different inst...

Successfully managing group dynamics of small, physically isolated groups is vital for long duration space exploration/habitation and for terrestrial CELSS (Controlled Environmental Life Support System) facilities with human participants. Biosphere 2 had important differences and shares some key commonalities with both Antarctic and space environme...

Closed ecological systems are desirable for a number of purposes. In space life support systems, material closure allows precious life-supporting resources to be kept inside and recycled. Closure in small biospheric systems facilitates detailed measurement of global ecological processes and biogeochemical cycles. Closed testbeds facilitate research...

Engineering challenges for closed ecological systems include methods of achieving closure for structures of different materials, and developing methods of allowing energy (for heating and cooling) and information transfer through the materially closed structure. Methods of calculating degree of closure include measuring degradation rates of inert t...

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The limitations that will govern bioregenerative life support applications in space, especially volume and weight, make multi-purpose systems advantageous. This paper outlines two systems which utilize plants and associated microbial communities of root or growth medium to both produce food crops and clean air and water. Underlying these approaches...

Entre 1984 et 1990, des plantations linéaires de diverses essences nobles autochtones ou introduites, dont l'acajou, Swietenia macrophylla, ou le mahot bois-bleu, Talipariti elatum, ont été installées sur une centaine d'hectares dans une zone de forêt tropicale humide au Sud-Est du Puerto Rico. Compte tenu de l'accroisse-ment annuel de la surface t...

The impact on tree and amphibian diversity of line-planting of tropical hardwoods—mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla × S. mahagoni) and mahoe (Hibiscus elatus)—was studied in a secondary subtropical wet forest of Puerto Rico. Common coqui (Eleutherodactylus coqui) and melodious coqui (E. wightmanae) are the most frequent frog species; forest coqui (E....

Microorganisms are the most widely spread form of living matter – occurring in every climatic region and in every zone of water and soil strata. They have a profound role in biogeochemical processes and are crucial for the completion of all biologically important material cycles, which support all life on Earth. Microorganisms can enter into varyin...

This chapter explores the development of a new type of scientific tool – man-made closed ecological systems. These systems have had a number of applications within the past 50 years. They are unique tools for investigating fundamental processes and interactions of ecosystems. They also hold the potentiality for creating life support systems for spa...

The limitations that will govern bioregenerative life support applications in space, especially volume and weight, make multi-purpose systems advantageous. This paper outlines two systems which utilize plants and associated microbial communities of root or growth medium to both produce food crops and clean air and water. Underlying these approaches...

To achieve sustainable, healthy closed ecological systems requires solutions to challenges of closing the water cycle – recycling wastewater/irrigation water/soil medium leachate and evaporated water and supplying water of required quality as needed for different needs within the facility. Engineering Biosphere 2, the first multi-biome closed ecolo...

Once it was established that the spaceflight environment was not a drastic impediment to plant growth, a remaining space biology question was whether long-term spaceflight exposure could cause changes in subsequent generations, even if they were returned to a normal Earth environment. In this study, we used a genomic approach to address this questi...

A mixed crop consisting of cowpeas, pinto beans and Apogee ultra-dwarf wheat was grown in the Laboratory Biosphere, a 40 m3 closed life system equipped with 12,000 W of high pressure sodium lamps over planting beds with 5.37 m2 of soil. Similar to earlier reported experiments, the concentration of carbon dioxide initially increased to 7860 ppm at 1...

Development of reliable and robust strategies for long-term life support for planetary exploration must be built from real-time experimentation to verify and improve system components. Also critical is incorporating a range of viable options to handle potential short-term life system imbalances. This paper revisits some of the conceptual framework...

An experiment utilizing cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata L.), pinto beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) and Apogee ultra-dwarf wheat (Triticum sativa L.) was conducted in the soil-based closed ecological facility, Laboratory Biosphere, from February to May 2005. The lighting regime was 13 h light/11 h dark at a light intensity of 960 μmol m−2 s−1, 45 mol m−2 d...

This paper will review the potential of a relatively new type of testbed platform for environmental education and research because of the unique advantages resulting from their material closure and separation from the outside environment. These facilities which we term “modular biospheres”, have emerged from research centered on space life support...

Biosphere 2 enclosed several ecosystems - ones analogous to rainforest, tropical savannah, thornscrub, desert, marsh and coral reef - and a diverse agro-ecology, with dozens of food crops, in virtual material isolation from Earth's environment. This permits a detailed examination of fixation and respiration from the continuous record of carbon diox...

A mixed crop consisting of cowpeas pinto beans and Apogee ultra-dwarf wheat was grown in Laboratory Biosphere a 40 m 3 closed life system equipped with 12000 watts of high pressure sodium lamps over planting beds with 5 37 m 2 of soil Similar to earlier reported experiments the concentration of carbon dioxide initially increased to 7860 ppm at 10 d...

An experiment utilizing cowpeas Vigna unguiculata pinto beans Phaseolus vulgaris L and Apogee ultra-dwarf wheat was conducted in the soil-based closed ecological facility Laboratory Biosphere from February to May 2005 The lighting regime was 13 hours light 11 hours dark at a light intensity of 960 mu mol m -2 s -1 45 moles m -2 day -1 supplied by h...

Development of reliable and robust strategies for long-term life support for mbox planetary exploration needs to be built on real-time experimentation to verify and improve system components Also critical is the incorporation of a range of viable options to handle potential short-term life system imbalances This paper revisits some of the conceptua...

A new type of testbed platform for education and research a modular biosphere has emerged from research which dates back to the Biosphere 2 and the effort to develop bioregenerative technologies for space life support Two examples of this type of facility are the Biosphere 2 Test Module a glass and spaceframe structure which runs on incident sunlig...

Two crop growth experiments in the soil-based closed ecological facility, Laboratory Biosphere, were conducted from 2003 to 2004 with candidate space life support crops. Apogee wheat (Utah State University variety) was grown, planted at two densities, 400 and 800 seeds m-2. The lighting regime for the wheat crop was 16 h of light-8 h dark at a tota...

During the years 2002 and 2003, three closed system experiments were carried out in the "Laboratory Biosphere" facility located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The program involved experimentation of "Hoyt" Soy Beans, (experiment #1) USU Apogee Wheat (experiment #2) and TU-82-155 sweet potato (experiment #3) using a 5.37 m2 soil planting bed which was 30...

Mars On Earth® (MOE) is a demonstration/research project that will develop systems for maintaining 4 people in a sustainable (bioregenerative) life support system on Mars. The overall design will address not only the functional requirements for maintaining long term human habitation in a sustainable artificial environment, but the aesthetic need fo...

Laboratory Biosphere is a 40 m3 closed life system that commenced operation in May 2002. Light is from 12,000 W of high pressure sodium lamps over planting beds with 5.37 m2 of soil. Water is 100% recycled by collecting condensate from the temperature and humidity control system and mixing with leachate collected from under the planting beds. Atmos...

Closure is a key concept in the physical sciences that has infrequently been used in ecology. The paper reviews closure to the flow of matter and energy (adiabatic walls) and closure to the flow of matter (diathermal walls). A system with rigid adiabatic walls will degrade eventually to chemical equilibrium, a state of maximum entropy. A third type...

Two crop growth experiments in the soil-based closed ecological facity, Laboratory Biosphere, were conducted from 2003-2004 with candidate space life support crops. Apogee wheat (Utah State University variety) was grown, planted in 2 densities, 400 and 800 seeds m-2. The lighting regime for the wheat crop was 16 hours of light -- 8 hours dark at a...

During the years 2002 and 2003, three closed system experiments were carried out in the "Laboratory Biosphere" facility located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The program involved experimentation with "Hoyt" Soy Beans, USU Apogee Wheat and TU-82-155 sweet potato using a 5.37 m2 soil planting bed which was 30 cm deep. The soil texture, 40% clay, 31% sand...

For humans to survive during long-term missions on the Martian surface, bioregenerative life support systems including food production will decrease requirements for launch of Earth supplies, and increase mission safety. It is proposed that the development of "modular biospheres"--closed system units that can be air-locked together and which contai...

Research and design of subsurface flow wetland wastewater treatment systems for a ground-based experimental prototype Mars Base facility has been carried out, using a subsurface flow approach. These systems have distinct advantages in planetary exploration scenarios: they are odorless, relatively low-labor and low-energy, assist in purification of...

The unprecedented challenges of creating Biosphere 2, the world's first laboratory for biospherics, the study of global ecology and long-term closed ecological system dynamics, led to breakthrough developments in many fields, and a deeper understanding of the opportunities and difficulties of material closure. This paper will review accomplishments...

The parallels between the challenges facing bioregenerative life support in artificial closed ecological systems and those in our global biosphere are striking. At the scale of the current global technosphere and expanding human population, it is increasingly obvious that the biosphere can no longer safely buffer and absorb technogenic and anthropo...

An initial experiment in the Laboratory Biosphere facility, Santa Fe, New Mexico, was conducted May-August 2002 using a soil-based system with light levels (at 12 h per day) of 58-mol m-2 d-1. The crop tested was soybean, cultivar Hoyt, which produced an aboveground biomass of 2510 grams. Dynamics of a number of trace gases showed that methane, nit...

Subsurface-flow constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment and nutrient recycling have a number of advantages in planetary exploration scenarios: they are odorless, relatively low labor and low energy, assist in purification of water and recycling of atmospheric CO2, and can directly grow some food crops. This article presents calculations for i...

Regardless of how well other growing conditions are optimized, crop yields will be limited by the available light up to saturation irradiances. Considering the various factors of clouds on Earth, dust storms on Mars, thickness of atmosphere, and relative orbits, there is roughly 2/3 as much light averaged annually on Mars as on Earth. On Mars, howe...

Human factors are a key component to the success of long-term space missions such as those necessitated by the human exploration of Mars and the development of bioregenerative and eventually self-sufficient life support sys­ tems for permanent space outposts. Observations by participants living inside the 1991-1993 Biosphere 2 closed system experim...

The unprecedented challenges of creating Biosphere 2, the world's first laboratory for biospherics, the study of global ecology and long-term closed ecological system dynamics led to breakthrough developments in many fields, and a deeper understanding of the opportunities and difficulties of material closure. This paper will review these accomplish...

Bioregenerative life support technologies for space application are advantageous if they can be constructed using locally available materials, and rely on renewable energy resources, lessening the need for launch and resupply of materials. These same characteristics are desirable in the global Earth environment because such technologies are more af...

Tramp ants are invading disturbed ecosystems worldwide, exterminating untold numbers of native species. They have even invaded Biosphere 2, a 1.28-hectare closed greenhouse structure built in the Arizona desert as a microcosm for studying ecological interactions and global change. Invertebrate surveys within Biosphere 2 from 1990 to 1997 have revea...

During the 2-year closure experiment (1991–1993) inside Biosphere 2, a two-stage system comprising primary treatment in anaerobic holding tanks followed by circulation in constructed wetlands treated all human habitat and domestic animal barn wastewater, as well as effluent from workshops, /medical and analytic laboratories. The system had an estim...

This paper outlines concepts, construction and operation of Biosphere 2, the large glass closed life facility in the mountains of southern Arizona, USA. Plans used concepts of systems ecology and biospherics from the early writings of V.I. Vernadsky, work of the Russian space program on closed ecological life support systems and other leading propo...

Litterfall and decomposition rates were examined in four terrestrial biome areas within Biosphere 2, Oracle, AZ during 1992–1993, the second year of closure. Mean±S.E. of 14 areas studied was 539±105 g (dry wt.) m−2 year−1. Litterfall was greatest in the lowland rainforest (1317±283 g m−2 year−1) and least in the sand dune desert (141±88 g m−2 year...

The agricultural area (intensive agriculture biome) of Biosphere 2 was started with a meter of alkaline soil with high organic content in 1990 and used to support eight persons during closure 1991–1993. Wastes were recycled to maintain fertility. Soils sampled at the end were analyzed for major and minor inorganic constituents and organic matter. C...

Results are presented from constructed wetland systems designed to treat wastewater in Akumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico, which was developed after prior experience with the Biosphere 2 closed ecological system wetland systems. These systems illustrate the congruity of needs in advanced life support systems and in solving social and environmental proble...

Important aspects of nutrient recycling in Biosphere 2 were plant litterfall/leaf decomposition in the terrestrial biomes and sewage and wastewater processing by a constructed wetland system. During the second year of closure, annual litterfall ranged from 1317 +/- 283 g/m2 in the lowland rainforest to 141 +/- 58 g/m2 in the desert sand dune area....

Space Biospheres Ventures is developing technologies for its Biosphere 2 project, closed ecological life systems and other life support test beds of potential value for the Space Exploration Initiative. Biosphere 2 is a 7.2 million cubic foot enclosed ecological system with seven biomes, a rain forest, savannah, desert, marsh, ocean, intensive agri...

The initial test of the Biosphere 2 agricultural system was to provide a nutritionally adequate diet for eight crew members during a two year closure experiment, 1991-1993. The overall results of that trial are presented in this paper. The 2000 m2 cropping area provided about 80 percent of overall nutritional needs during the two years. Adaptation...

The following summary of results from the first 2-year closure experiment (September 26, 1991 to September 26, 1993) in Biosphere 2 is excerpted from a chapter written by William Dempster and myself for a book, Strategies for Mars, edited by Carol Stoker and Carter Emmart of NASA Ames Research Center. The book will be published later this year by K...

Biosphere 2 is the first man-made, soil-based, bioregenerative life support system to be developed and tested. The utilization and amendment of local space resources, e.g. martian soil or lunar regolith, for agricultural and other purposes will be necessary if we are to minimize the requirement for Earth materials in the creation of long-term off-p...

Biosphere 2, a virtually airtight facility for the study of biospheric and ecosystem processes, includes an agricultural area of about 0.2 hectare for growing food for its eight crew members. Since the commencement of an initial two-year closure experiment, this agricultural system has operated without use of toxic chemicals which might pollute the...

Biosphere 2 is a materially closed, 1.28 hectare facility in Arizona designed for research ranging from organismic to systems ecology, including opportunities for management by humans of a total ecological system. It was also designed to serve as an educational tool toward the understanding of Earth processes and the consequences of human actions,...

Constructed in 1986, the Biosphere 2 Test Module has been used since the end of that year for closed ecological systems experiments. It is the largest closed ecological facility ever built, with a sealed variable volume of some 480 cubic meters. It is built with a skin of steel spaceframes with double-laminated glass panels admitting about 65 perce...

As part of the ground-based preparation for creating long-term life systems needed for space habitation and settlement, Space Biospheres Ventures (SBV) is undertaking the Biosphere 2 project near Oracle, Arizona. Biosphere 2, currently under construction, is scheduled to commence its operations in 1991 with a two-year closure period with a crew of...

Space Biospheres Ventures is developing technologies for its Biosphere 2 project — a 3 acre materially closed ecological system with human habitat, intensive agriculture and five wilderness biomes — and other life-support testbeds for space habitats in microgravity and the Moon and Mars, as well as for ecological research pertinent to the biosphere...

The papers from the workshop on Biological Life Support Technologies: Commercial Opportunities are presented. The meeting attracted researchers in environmental and bioregenerative systems. The role of biological support technologies was evaluated in the context of the global environmental challenge on Earth and the space exploration initiative, wi...

Biospherics, defined as the integrative science of the life sciences in the same fashion that astronautics is integrative of the physical sciences, opens onto ecotechnical possibilities, in conjunction with astronautics, for the expansion of the earth's life into outer space. Attention is presently given to 'Biosphere II', a major project aimed at...

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Two case studies are presented of recent applications of Wastewater Gardens (WWG) -for an Aboriginal community in northwest Australia and in southern Algeria. WWG uses high-diversity of plants in the subsurface flow wetland and in the final subsoil irrigation to value-add through water conservation, prevention of pollution of groundwater and by gro...