Biosphere 2 Adventures

Teacher Symposium

2009-04-24T22:49:00.000-07:00

So, this last Saturday we were blessed with a special event: A teacher symposium. Science teachers from all over the area (Phoenix, Sahuarita, Tucson, pretty much every city in Southern Arizona). The symposium was for teachers to learn better techniques or interesting ways to get their students interested in science. We also had volunteers from the Bio5 institute assisting and holding some of their own classes as well. Some of the Bio5 volunteers greeted the teachers as they came in...

From Teacher Symposium

Some of the Bio5 volunteers taught some basic genetics to the teachers.

From Teacher Symposium

The first hour of the day went to some tables and displays set up for the teachers as they arrived through the visitor center. Myself and the other undergrads were advertising our recently acquired GEMS kits.

From Teacher Symposium

Once the majority of the teachers had arrived, the undergrads (including myself) and some of the Bio5 volunteers guided them to their classes. There was a variety of classes with very different focuses. Alas I left the paper stating what all the class names were back in the car we took up, but the ones that stood out I remember.

From Teacher Symposium

Partially because the Biosphere lot is so gigantic, I simply didn't have the energy to rush around to all the classes (they were all over the area), but I managed to get some pretty good shots.

One of my personal favorite classes going on was the insect one, where a lady with a bunch of different insects showed some very cool ways you could intrigue students into studying entomology.

From Teacher Symposium

(for example, here she had teachers observe which food the crickets preferred)

From Teacher Symposium

She also introduced the teachers to some giant roaches to get them more comfortable with insects. (Oh and Kristin, apparently I DID get a photo of you holding one. :p)

The following classroom was about modeling climate change. The program used was a bit too complex for junior high/high school students, but illustrated a lot of principles of climate change so the teachers could translate for their students.

From Teacher Symposium

One of the other fun ones I saw, was kinetically illustrating a pie graph to students. The teacher had the other teachers hold a piece of string to make a physical pie graph.

From Teacher Symposium

Some of the other classes had teachers actually going into the Biosphere to collect data. Whitney got to give an impromptu tour of the inside. :p

From Teacher Symposium

And while we were inside the rainforest, I finally got a really good photo of the area:

From Teacher Symposium

Slideshow of the photos:

Earth Day!

2009-04-16T16:21:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, the 11th of April, was Earth Day for Biosphere 2. Despite the poor whether conditions (which you'll get to see a bit of, and which me and other suffered through :p), there was an amazing turnout. If my memory serves correctly, we had a headcount of nearly 1300 people in that day, exceeding our greatest expectations. There was even bets going around in the management about the headcount we'd get, and the highest expected was 450 people. Almost tripled that number.

Needless to say, it was one heck of a busy day. We had our open-style tours again, like the music of the sphere day. This probably eased a great deal of load that might've occurred had we done our regular tour style, even though the open-style requires much more labor, it allows a greater number of people to go through.

Regardless, we had a wonderful set up outside, with tents and everything.

From Earth Day

A snack shop was set up on the lawn with plenty of tables for people to eat.

From Earth Day

The tent wasn't complete without music.

From Earth Day

And we had numerous "vendors" who came to talk on Earth day and present some of the things they were working on. We had people from all different professions, ranging from park rangers, to art students, to solar panel systems, to professors, and even to car producers (hybrids and electric cars)! As a side note, I was rather impressed when the guy who had the electric car came through. Except for the wheels on the ground, the car was completely silent.

From Earth Day

Unfortunately for me, I got stuck with the job of guiding the "vendors" to where they needed to go, in the freezing weather. Thank goodness Val came along halfway through and offered me a jacket which helped immensely. But while I was sitting there along the road, I got some nice visuals of the weather.

From Earth Day

A couple of "vendors" that regulars at Biosphere 2 might recognize were also there. The physics factory was present.

From Earth Day

The herpetology club was also there, but unfortunately, due to the extremely cold weather, the snakes were in no mood to be outside, or even moving. They were rather lethargic.

From Earth Day

We even had a person with some really neat birds come along. She probably had more, but I got to see a falcon and an owl.

From Earth Day

Speaking of birds... I got the rare privilege of seeing a roadrunner running around near the stairway to the Biosphere.

From Earth Day

Now what was this bad weather I mentioned? Well, besides the freezing cold, we got hailed on. Yep. Hail the size of BB's.

From Earth Day

Needless to say, it was an exciting day (except for the cold), and hopefully we'll get to have more fun like this soon!

Slideshow of the photos:

Breakout

2009-04-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

First and foremost, allow me to apologize for my lack of updates recently. School has been tremendously busy with a series of difficult tests, and as such, photography has not really been at the forefront of my mind. I also need to apologize for such few photos on this particular blog. Tomorrow, however, I will update with much more photos of last Saturday's Earth Day Event.

As a gift for my tardiness, I present to you folks a panorama of the Biosphere as seen from the lawn. Don't forget to click the magnifying glass on the page to see the image ingreater detail.

From Breakout

This particular web log, however, was either two or three weeks ago, if memory serves correctly. There were a bunch of graduate students from all the different sciences who came up to Biosphere 2 for a post-graduation discussion and discussion of future sustainability.

From Breakout

The students first listened to the main speaker talk about future sustainability and energy sources. Then the other undergrads and myself guided the students to their respective "breakout" rooms where they would engage in discussions and potential solutions.

From Breakout

For me and my coworkers, this was a rather short day -- All we needed to really do was show the graduates where their breakout rooms were, and they could figure the rest out from there. Since we didn't know what could've gone wrong, we had been scheduled for the entire day, but ended up only staying a couple hours.

However, there was a scrumptious lunch meal waiting for us and the graduate students (I was a little too distracted by the food to take a picture, my apologies). Needless to say, I love my job. :p

I'll update tomorrow with our Earth Day Event.

Snakes in a Biosphere (again!)

2009-03-19T14:19:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago, the Tucson Herpetological Society paid a visit to the Biosphere again. We had a wonderful time introducing the visitors to some of the areas local (non-venemous) snakes.

I actually arrived at the Biosphere early (before Catalina and Whitney) with Carmen and Isabella. They were tasked with documenting some of the indicator plant species around the Biosphere in preparation for a convention of plant biologists.

While we were looking around, we also saw some really nice insects around.

From Snakes in a Biosphere

So when Catalina and Whitney arrived, we had to set up downstairs in the habitat. Of course the snakes were excited to get out of the bags...

From Snakes in a Biosphere

Although Taco was being a bit grumpy. So we let him chill inside his container.

From Snakes in a Biosphere

Once we had set up, we were ready to interact with all the visitors!

From Snakes in a Biosphere

Some of them were really enthused, others were scared. We tried to encourage people who were afraid of snakes to come up and play with them, since these snakes are really nice. We had Rufus (the gopher snake), Rosy (the rosy boa), the King Snake (sorry, I don't remember his name), the Sonoran Boa (again, forgot his name), and Taco (the garter snake).

From Snakes in a Biosphere

Even some kids got to play with the snakes. :)

From Snakes in a Biosphere

And surprise surprise... we actually got Rosy (from the front desk) to hold Rosy, the rosy boa. She's normally somewhat skiddish around snakes, but after a little while, she just had to hold the cute little snake.

From Snakes in a Biosphere

And of course we needed the obligatory crazy snake lady photos of Catalina and Whitney.

From Snakes in a Biosphere

Slideshow:

Winter Annuals Weekend Party

2009-03-06T19:53:00.000-08:00

So, about three weeks ago, a new research project started involving the study of winter annuals in and around Tucson, and how well they grew under certain conditions, as well as other details. Needless to say, this requires hour after hour of somewhat tedious data collection. :p

So what better way to do it than having a party? Or at least, something in the semblance of a party where you can get everybody working together and on the same level.

So a week and a half ago, there was a 3-day weekend party up at the Biosphere for the research assistants working on the project. I was only up there for two days, due to having class on the Friday of the party.

When I first arrived, I saw what a monumental task we had just started undergoing, and would be going through for the next month or two. For starters, Whitney and I started by counting leaves on all the winter annuals, and then randomizing them to reduce interference caused by being near members of the same species.

From Winter Annuals

Evan and Ashley were working the 5400s (I think that's their name), and needless to say, I do not have any clue what those things do, but it looks complicated. :p Hopefully I can be trained in them some day.

From Winter Annuals

(poor plant's getting tormented)

So we left them to do their thing. We had a lot of our own work to do: plant harvesting. No, not like harvesting corn. More like counting leaves, picking apart the annuals, seeing how much surface area was per leaf, and collecting root samples from the soil.

So this fearsome beast of a machine was none other than the leaf area meter. You'd take all the leaves from a plant, squash them between two transparencies, and run them through the machine, and it would tell you how much surface area (square centimers) was there for the entire plant.

From Winter Annuals

Of course, you had to prepare the plants for the scanning first.

From Winter Annuals

Once the scanning of the leaves was done, we transferred the now plant-less tubes over to have their soil and roots collected. Since we didn't want to damage the microroots, we will be sending the soil samples elsewhere to be processed.

From Winter Annuals

All the data retrieved thus far would then be stored on an excel spreadsheet.

From Winter Annuals

And that's what we did for the vast majority of the day. Harvesting leaves, and taking soil samples. Believe me, it sounds like it would be quick and easy. But often it would take nearly 20 minutes effort per plant for a single person. Which means a fairly slow pace, considering we started with around 500 annuals, I believe.

So, once our day's work was over, we went up to our casitas, prepared for dinner, and had a wonderful meal with the Huxman family, some of their relatives, and the other research assistants. Scientists with alcohol are interesting, to say the least. :p

Since I'm not much of a party person myself, I preferred to take photos of some of the wonderful things going on outside the casita. Such as the sun setting on the Biosphere. Or the stars.

From Winter Annuals

You could really see the stars from there -- there was practically no light pollution that far out from Tucson.

So once the party had died down, everybody sauntered back to their temporary residences, and slept the night away.

Come morning... and we're back to harvesting plants. Whee. Some people from yesterday had left (Carmen, Whitney, Dan, and the other guy who I wish I could remember his name). Today, Kristin and Karrena (sorry if I butchered your name) came up. It was a relaxed day as we fell back into the routine of harvesting.

From Winter Annuals

And then after another long day's work, we were done for that weekend. We're still doing harvesting and other work now, but man, that was a huge effort.

A slideshow of the photos:

The Ant and the Elephant

2009-02-18T21:13:00.001-08:00

So about a week ago, Whitney, Catalina, and myself had a little booth for Biosphere 2 out in front of Centennial Hall at the University of Arizona. There was a show that Saturday called "The Ant and the Elephant" meant primarily for little kids. Our table had fun interactive demos, as well as information and fliers about Biosphere 2:

From The Ant and the Elephant

Catalina and Whitney kept up with the kids and adults trying out the demos we had set up. It certainly was a busy job, the kids really got interested about it. I was talking with the adults and parents about Biosphere 2 and more information on events held there for kids, and lectures and other information.

From The Ant and the Elephant

To see a slideshow of all the pictures, follow this link, or click below. There are more images in the slideshow then I put up here!

Music of the Sphere

2009-01-29T19:13:00.000-08:00

So, just last weekend, we had a special event. It was none other than the Music of the Sphere! Musicians from around the globe (we even had some from Brazil) came to the Biosphere to play and song for us, as we offered an alternative method of tours the same day -- instead of having a tour guide drag a large group around, we instead allowed the tourists to freely wander through the biosphere and take as much time as they wanted.

To analyze how well this method worked, we had several research assistants ready to ambush unsuspecting tourists with surveys:

From Music of the Spheres

Lo and behold, we absolutely filled the drop boxes for the surveys to the brim! We certainly got all the feedback we wanted. :) The general impression we got, though, was that people preferred the free roaming method. However, the downside is that the free roaming method is labor intensive on the B2 employees -- it takes much more time and coordination, and occasionally you can get people going in really strange directions (some people did the tour completely in reverse).

The day was beautiful however...

From Music of the Spheres

... and we certainly weren't going to waste such a beautiful day!

The musicians were set up...

From Music of the Spheres

The researchers were ready...

From Music of the Spheres

... and it was time to make music!

From Music of the Spheres

... and I think it's safe to say that people enjoyed themselves!

From Music of the Spheres

All-in-all, it was quite an eventful day. The research assistants were running miscellaneous necessary jobs, the (normally) tour guides were stationary and provided knowledge to the tourists, Matt and some of the other administrators ran logistics and management, and the musicians made beautiful music. It was a tremendous success.

Alas, I got sunburned for enjoying the outdoors too much. But I don't think that'll be much of a problem... because it seems that both the public and the people enjoyed this style so much, that when special events occur, we may just try this style again.

Slideshow of the photos:

Snakes (On a Plane!)

2008-12-07T22:32:00.001-08:00

Not too long ago (roughly two or three weeks ago), we had the pleasure of working with the Tucson Herpetological Society in our Science Saturday event. Herpetology is the study of reptiles and amphibians.

I have to admit, when I first got word of working with the Herpetological Society, I got an email saying, "Re: Herp Club" (abbreviated). I was very close to being concerned, but I decided to read the email before judging. Lo and behold, my suspicions were alleviated, and we were going to be working with snakes that Saturday!

We were greeted by a lovely sign, both in the admissions center and down in the Biosphere:

From Herpetological Society

We went to the lower part of the human habitat and set up shop. It was really quite a fun time -- we had lots of people who came to see the snakes, with enough down time for the snakes not to get too excited. There's a lot of photos for this, so I shall post the link to the slideshow instead of making an incredibly long post:

http://picasaweb.google.com/USSVagrant/HerpetologicalSociety#slideshow/5270212566203010530

For individual images, go here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/USSVagrant/HerpetologicalSociety#

Outside the Biosphere

2008-12-07T22:14:00.000-08:00

These photos are in no way a complete visual of the outside of Biosphere. There's also a huge chunk of buildings that are a corollary to the biosphere itself -- buildings for offices, for visitors and admission, for films, and for conventions. I'm focusing on the main building, and some of the closer buildings.

Biosphere 2 Adventures

Teacher Symposium

Earth Day!

Breakout

Snakes in a Biosphere (again!)

Winter Annuals Weekend Party

The Ant and the Elephant

Music of the Sphere

Snakes (On a Plane!)

Outside the Biosphere

Biomes and Parts of the Biosphere Part 3

Biomes and Parts of the Biosphere Part 2

Biomes and Parts of the Biosphere Part 1

First Impressions Part 2

First Impressions Part 1