July 2nd,3rd and 4th Tucson to Tombstone

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Saguarro Forest

While in Tucson, we did some shopping and went to Saguarro National Park. The exhibits are excellent and very informative. You can see a lot of desert  and take pictures, but not really understand what makes it work and how the plants, animals and people interact until you see some of the films and read the displays.
On the way out of town on the 3rd, we drove an extra 50 miles to see Bioshere 2, Biosphere 1 is Earth. This was where 8 people lived for 2 years, attempting to live completely independant of outside resourses. The experiment was considered by many to be a failure as they did not reach their goal, but scientists believe it was a huge success because of all they learned from it about living in space. The 2 big problems were food and oxygen. They weren't able to produce enough calories to keep the people healthy, so all of them lost a lot of weight. They could have solved this by sending one person out, but no one volunteered and they all adjusted their intake. The oxygen problem could not be solved, and when they all started suffering oxygen deprivation symtoms, they had to have outside help. Later they found that the concrete inside the buildings, which was new, depleted oxygen as it cured. Back to present day-the Biosphere houses several different ecosystems, and is used by environmentalists to study the effects of different stresses on the environment.

Ocean and reef ecosystem

Rainforest



This is one of 2 giant 'lungs' used to equalize pressure inside the buildings to prevent the glass panes from exploding or imploding