University of the Sunshine Coast
If I ask you to picture a biosphere in your mind, it’s possible you imagine a giant plastic bubble in the desert filled with an oasis of plants and animals.
If you did, you’d be wrong. You and many others.
This research dome idea is the default for many, thanks largely to a 1996 comedy movie called Bio-dome.
Bio-dome was deemed one of the world’s most “unwatchably awful” films, and yet somehow, its key concept – an enormous research dome facility that becomes a prison for two bumbling college students – persists.
To be clear, a biodome is NOT a biosphere. And this International Day for Biosphere Reserves (3 Nov), it’s time we learned the difference:
- A biodome is an enclosed man-made ecosystem structure. A supersize dome accommodating a closed self-sustaining microenvironment of flora and fauna mainly for research purposes.
- A biosphere is a complex natural ecosystem that is not enclosed. It encompasses the humans that live within it, the things we build, as well as the conservation of the diversity of nature within it. It’s the natural environment where we live our lives.
/University Public Release. View in full here.
