Biosphere Project. The eight successful candidates for the Biosphere Project, seen at a press conference. The 'Biospherians' will spend two years in an air- and water-tight enclosure covering 2.5 acres of land near Tuscon, Arizona. Sharing their world will be 3,800 species of plants and animals, forming five completely self- sufficient 'biomes', or ecosystems. Biosphere is a $30 million privately-funded project to investigate the interaction between humans and an enclosed ecological environment, and to study the possibilities for future planetary colonisation.