Life on LEO: Plants to be Added to the Landscape Evolution Observatory at Biosphere 2 arizona.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from arizona.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Chris Richards/University of Arizona
Ecologists studying the tropical rainforest biome in Biosphere 2 near Tucson say it s very similar to being in natural rainforests, which absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen on a grand scale.
Step inside Biosphere 2’s tropical rainforest, which thrives beneath an enormous glass dome, and visitors are met by a wall of warm humidity and lush greenery. The sprawling complex north of Tucson in Oracle provides climate-change researchers unique opportunities to test theories in ways that would be impossible in the field.
This is where a team of ecologists recently found that tropical forests may be more resilient to rising temperatures than originally predicted. The key isn’t the heat but the humidity, according to the study, which was published in October in the journal Nature Plants.