MORE – 3B – EOCT – Reading % Writing

For anyone interested in our environment, Biosphere Center 2 is a fantastic place to visit. The centre is in the Arizona Desert in America, and it is an exciting ecological experiment. It is a bit like an enormous bubble – no air from the outside gets inside the Biosphere – and there is even an ocean inside with one million gallons of seawater!

The first Biosphere was built in the 1980s, and for a while people lived inside it. But there were a lot of problems with that idea and the people didn't feel well, and scientists now agree that people should not live inside the centre.

Now the centre is open to visitors. People can go there and see how different things like deserts, rain forests and oceans work in the real world. We asked one visitor what it was like inside the centre and they told us the centre helped them to learn a lot more about the world we live in.

One man who works at the centre said that visitors find the hands-on displays very interesting and they love the fact that they can move around from being above the ocean, to being in a desert or in an agricultural area. He told us that people think it is great fun to travel through several different climates all in the same place!

Every day, scientists work at the centre studying patterns of climate and looking at information that is collected from all over the world. In this way, they hope to be able to find out how we can do things to protect our environment for the future.

Biosphere Center 2 is open daily from 09:00 until 16:00, and there are shops, cafes and restaurants, and a theatre at the centre as well as a hotel for guests who want to stay a few days.