Page 20 - fall2017

Terrestrial

Observatory

Biosphere 2 research integrates
scientific disciplines

by Liz Warren-Pederson Jacob Chinn photo

ver the past two decades, the
OAmerican West has experienced
‘The rainforest protracted drought. An estimated 100
million trees are dying. Our extraction of
inside Biosphere 2 ground water is unsustainable.
allows us to test how And researchers are still seeking to
understand the global grand challenge of
plants might adjust water — including how it flows through
their water uptake biomes.
These are among the issues under
strategies through a investigation at Biosphere 2’s Landscape
controlled drought Evolution Observatory, or LEO, which
consists of three artificial landscapes
and model how they studded with sensors that can track in
will adapt to climate unprecedented detail how physical and
biological processes interact to shape the
change.’ environment.
“We have had three National Science
Foundation proposals funded in the
last five years,” says Peter Troch, science
director at Biosphere 2 and a professor of
hydrology and water resources at the UA.
Troch is the lead investigator on the LEO
project and has been with Biosphere 2
since the UA took it over in 2007.
“We’re studying, under controlled
conditions, questions that are hard to
answer in the real world,” he explains.
“For example, we are working with
colleagues at Johns Hopkins University
to test a new theory about how long
water resides in hill slopes and how the
movement of water affects the transport
of solutes.”

18 ARIZONA ALUMNI MAGAZINE