Life Under Glass by Mark Nelson

Life Under Glass by Mark Nelson

Author:Mark Nelson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Synergetic Press
Published: 2020-06-18T16:00:00+00:00


THE DESERT SHOWS A MIND OF ITS OWN

Life asserts itself in surprising ways, and this is particularly true with the desert. When SBV designed it, a basic problem had to be solved: how to find a desert that could live with the high humidity which could not be avoided with an ocean, marsh, and rainforest under the same roof. The research team found the solution in the ‘fog deserts’ of coastal regions. For part of the year, heavy fogs rise from the ocean currents and cover the vegetation, supplying some of its water needs and reducing transpiration losses. These deserts have adapted to high humidity, though rain is still extremely sparse and sporadic as in all desert regions.

Fairly close to Arizona is one of the most striking fog deserts—that of Baja California. Collections from the plant life there formed the majority of the Biosphere 2 desert, although some plants from Israeli, African, and South American coastal deserts were also included. The semi-scrub plants, desert bushes, and annuals (whose seeds were collected from Baja) grew luxuriantly in our conditions, enjoying the longer rainy season we gave them the first year in our attempts to keep carbon dioxide levels low. In places where condensation off the glass added extra moisture and extended the growing season before the soil dried out, they did especially well. The salt bush family (Atriplex) formed a bonsai forest on the slope down to the salt playa. It was only in limited areas of the desert that the Boojums, yuccas, and columnar cardon cactus (a fog desert relative of the Saguaro cactus which grows on the mountain slopes outside Biosphere 2) dominated, giving the kind of cactus and succulent desert originally pictured.

The bulk of the desert developed into what ecologists call a coastal sage scrub desert environment. Instead of trying to force it to stay in the original conception, we went along with its own tendencies. We included a good diversity of plants in our original introductions so there was still a good mix of species. We would introduce yet more diversity during the transition, enriching the kind of ecosystem that was emerging on its own.

The two thorn scrub ecosystems had developed as anticipated. They were put in as transition zones (ecotones) between the savannah and the desert, for that is how they are frequently found in the tropics. The upper thorn scrub was primarily based on communities found in Sonora, Mexico, and the lower thorn scrub is dominated by Madagascar/South African thorn scrub species. The night-blooming cereus cactus from South America was a special plant in the upper thorn scrub. Its beautiful white blossoms appeared for just one or two nights at the beginning of the rainy season.

In both desert and thorn scrub, the biospherian weather-makers had to pay careful attention to the plants to gauge when to start the rains and when to end them. This was far more important than in the savannah, which has adapted to a variety of rainfall seasons and more frequent out-of-season storms.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.