| Greenhouse One provides us with an opportunity to conduct experiments on microbial mats and stromatolites incubated under conditions of natural levels of sunlight, and controlled temperature. In addition, we can simulate conditions no longer present on Earth. We can, for example, control the sulfate concentration in the overlying water to approximate those thought to have existed on early Earth. Below are some images of the greenhouse, as well as some of the equipment and apparatus inside. |
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An exterior view of Greenhouse One. A small part of the San Francisco Bay is visible to the right of the greenhouse. For a live look inside at the greenhouse, click here. |
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This is our remotely operable XYZ table. It was designed and built by Dan Andrews and Brian Koss, engineers in at Ames Research Center (see CodeF/CodeIC Work Products). "The table is remotely operable, and is an important element of our greenhouse collaboratory, which is being developed by ourselves and the Ames ScienceDesk Team in the Computational Sciences Division. The collaboragory includes a number of tools for remote scientific collaboration, including a real-time Web-controlled interface to the greenhouse table, a centralized project information repository called ScienceOrganizer, and an image markup and annotation tool. The table configuration, as well as the configuration of the collaboratory and some results from our first experiment, are described in more detail in the PDF file below. Dan and Brian also made a movie during the construction of the table, which shows the movements of the table, and the stage that moves the oxygen microsensors to create profiles of oxygen concentrations in the mats. Click here to see the movie (MPG format, 10 MB).
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Oxygen microelectrodes can be positioned anywhere on the XYZ table, and can be lowered into the mats at at a spatial resolution of about 50 micrometers. |
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A remotely operable webcam enables us to see where the electrodes are positioned. |  |
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The flow boxes are also the site of other experiments. Here, flux chanbers have been placed over the mats at the far end of the flow boxes in order to measure the fluxes of oxygen, dissolved inorganic carbon, and nutrients between the mats and the water. |
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Samples can be taken from the mats for a variety of analyses. Here, cores collected from the mats are being processed to measure porewater nutrient concentrations. |
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