The work by Kathy Gallucci, associate professor of biology, on the case study titled “Why Can’t We Build a Biosphere?” was supported by the National Science Foundation.
Kathy Gallucci, associate professor of biology, has published the case study “Why Can’t We Build a Biosphere?” on the website of SUNY Buffalo’s National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation.
This case study is designed to help students learn about the ecosystem services of Earth (Biosphere 1) by examining the challenges faced by the designers who tried to replicate its components in Biosphere 2.
After an introduction to Biosphere 2, students learn about the four main types of ecosystem services and discuss how Biosphere 2 might provide these services and calculate their own ecological footprint, demonstrating how humans are overreaching the ecosystem services of Biosphere 1, just as the biospherians could not be sustained by the ecosystem services included in Biosphere 2.
The case study can be found at http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/collection/detail.asp?case_id=938&id=938