Biosphere 2 Work

Today (7/7) Erin and I got to help a post-doc with her experiment in Biosphere 2. Travis Huxman tried really hard to get us out there and working on a project during our summer here, so it's neat to have the opportunity.

Our work was with a woman from the UK named Alex who is examining the effects of climate change on soil microbial systems. She is also studying how the microbial system may evolve in response to two different climate change scenarios: 1) periods of drought with short spurts of intense rainfall and 2) periods of drought with more frequent moderate rainfall. We did a lot of the prep work, which furthers the theme of the summer that most of the time for experiments is in the form of prep work.

Essential the experiment works like this:
- set out soil colonies from the Santa Rita experimental range in the desert biome
- after a certain amount of time select the 5 "best" (i.e. most productive) soil microbial systems
- allow those 5 systems to reproduce and set new colonies in desert biome
- repeat

Erin and I were working on the second generation mixing the soil from the reproductive systems into sterile soil. There seems to be a lot of assumptions in this experiment. One of the big assumptions that I have trouble with is the assumption that the 5 best colonies will reproduce in nature. According to Alex there is reason to believe it happens that way, but no one has studied it since soil microbial systems didn't really come in vogue until recently.

Another thing I found out that I do not enjoy: soil sampling. It's too meticulous and small scale for my taste. I also question how "sterile" the soil samples can actually be since even with the best of care there are still possibilities for contamination. I think I prefer to look at the ecosystem as a whole. But they say "don't miss the forest for the trees."