Chapter 6. My Big Summer Adventure.
Oracle, Arizona. Biosphere 2
Hello again!
Sorry for my absence these past two weeks. I have just recently returned from my trip to the Biosphere 2 in Arizona. Now, if you're like me you might be thinking: So what happened to Biosphere 1? Well guess what, you're living in Biosphere 1! It's the Earth! Biosphere 2 is a research and teaching facility about the different living systems with in the Earth. They have all sorts of different exhibits set up displaying different parts of the Earth. They have the Ocean, the Savannah, the Desert, Mangroves, and the Rainforest.
Sorry for my absence these past two weeks. I have just recently returned from my trip to the Biosphere 2 in Arizona. Now, if you're like me you might be thinking: So what happened to Biosphere 1? Well guess what, you're living in Biosphere 1! It's the Earth! Biosphere 2 is a research and teaching facility about the different living systems with in the Earth. They have all sorts of different exhibits set up displaying different parts of the Earth. They have the Ocean, the Savannah, the Desert, Mangroves, and the Rainforest.
I traveled with a group of interns and divers from our local aquarium, Team Ecco Ocean Center and Aquarium, to help work on the ocean exhibit. The Ocean exhibit at Biosphere 2 consist of 676,000 gallons of saltwater and the goal for it is to replicate the Sea of Cortez
.
One of the problems the Biosphere has been running into is that their Salinity levels in the water have been dropping. The theory that the interns and divers from Team Ecco came up with is that the algae in the tank has been absorbing the salt, which has been causing the salinity levels to drop. One of our missions was finding a way to clean the algae from the tank and trying to squeeze the water from the algae and get it back into the ocean.
It was definitely an interesting week in Arizona. I finally finished editing pictures from the trip and I'm finally ready to share some of what I got to see! Be warned, there will be a bunch of pictures of Cacti because, Arizona is full of Cacti!!!!
Cacti
Cacti
The two pictures above were the view that I got to wake up to every morning! They were taken right out side of our "casita" (small house/apartment).
*Fun Fact: I couldn't remember Casita so I kept calling our apartment a Quesorito*
The red fruit on the Cacti is called "Prickly Pear" and yes, you CAN eat them! You just have to be super careful when picking them. I braved it and tasted the fruit during my trip. Very Tasty!
Along with Cacti, Arizona had amazing views of the mountains.
*On our last day at the Biosphere we went on a hike through the Desert early in the morning. We got to see all sorts of cacti and plants and bugs and animals tracks.*
Being in the desert, they also told us there was a chance that we would get to see all kinds of wild life such as:
- scorpions
- javelina
- rattle snakes
- tarantulas
Now for Pictures of the Biosphere 2 and the work our Team did.
The next two pictures is the building where the rainforest was located:
This Picture is from part of the ocean exhibit that our team got to help clean. They call this the beach area.
In this picture our team is cleaning algae from the mangroves.
Our new friend, Molly took us around the biosphere and showed us how their aquapontics system works!
...
That's all the pictures I have to share for now, but if you want to see more of what the Team Ecco crew was up to for the week they were in Arizona you can check out their face book page:
and if you want to read more about Biosphere 2 you can check out their web page:
Thanks for reading! I hope everyone is enjoying their last few days/weeks of summer!!!
-K
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