The atmosphere of the earth is made up of layers with different

temperatures.
The troposphere is the layer
closest to the earth, and it is
the layer in which we live. It is
about ten miles deep. Seventy
five percent of the mass of all
our atmospheric molecules is in
the troposphere, and this is
where we find water vapor,
dust, pollen, and soot particles.
Weather happens in the
troposphere. This layer is
turbulent, with storms and
atmospheric mixing.
In the troposphere, the air
cools gradually as it gets
further from the earth. At the very top of this layer the air temperature is about 76 degrees below
zero on the Fahrenheit scale. This is important, because it changes water vapor into ice, forming
the cold trap, a temperature region where water vapor stops going up. If we had no cold trap,
water molecules could rise in the atmosphere where they would eventually break down into
oxygen and hydrogen. The small, light hydrogen molecules could then escape into space. Earth
would loose its water if we had no cold trap.

This diagram shows the different atmospheric layers.

The stratosphere lies above the troposphere. It is about twenty miles deep. The stratosphere
contains about 24% of the mass of all the atmospheric molecules. This layer has the ozone layer
in it. The ozone layer protects all life on earth from the harmful and potentially even lethal
ultraviolet radiation emitted by the sun. There is not very much ozone -- if it were all together, it
would form a layer only three millimeters thick. Three millimeters is not quite this deep:

The lower part of the stratosphere is cold, but it warms up as it gets farther from the earth --
another effect of the ozone. This layer is peaceful compared to the troposphere. If you have
been watching the math, you see that

• The troposphere is 10 miles deep and has 75% of the mass of the atmosphere
• The stratosphere is 20 miles deep and has 24% of the mass of the atmosphere
This means that the lowest 30 miles of the atmosphere has 99% of the mass of the
molecules! However, the atmosphere goes out to 40,000 miles. It makes sense, then,
that the atmospheric molecules get farther and farther apart from each other as they go
up the remaining 39,970 miles, and that is just what they do. Although there are some
atmospheric molecules up here, they are scattered and occasional, not like our thick
ocean of air close to the surface.
The entire atmosphere of the earth extends out about 40,000 miles above the earth --
and the earth is about 8000 miles across. The moon is a little less than 240,000 miles
away.

The Relative Positions of the Earth, the Atmosphere, and the Moon
Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in
Amazonia

Table of Contents
• 1 The Scope of the
Experiment
• 2 Rationale
• 3 Approach
• 4 Current Status
• 5 Political and Legal Issues
• 6 Further Reading

Lead Author: Myanna Lahsen (other articles)

Article Topics: Environmental monitoring, Remote sensing, Forestry, Natural

resource management and policy, Sustainable development and Environmental
policy

This article has been reviewed and approved by the following Topic Editor:
Sidney Draggan (other articles)

Last Updated: January 30, 2008

The Scope of the Experiment

LBA sites span the Amazon from the headwaters in the Andes, along the river and
its tributaries in the Amazon Basin, to the River’s mouth in coastal Brazil. (Source:
Map courtesy of LBA science team, adapted by Robert Simmon; NASA)

The Large-scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment in Amazônia (LBA) is

the largest program of international scientific cooperation to be focused on
the Amazon region. It is the largest global change science project to ever
have taken place in Brazil, where the majority of the research is focused. It
is an environmental science experiment focused on understanding the role
of the Amazon in global environmental change, including how land-use
affects global change and how global environmental change affects the
region.

Rationale
The LBA was created with the intention of informing decision making under
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
as well as national-level Brazilian policies bearing on environmental
conservation. In the context of widespread concern about high
deforestation rates in the Amazon region, a group of Brazilian, American
and European scientists proposed the LBA in the hope that it could
simultaneously advance basic scientific understanding and preservation of
Amazonian ecosystems. The LBA was also centrally propelled by scientific
interest in a continuation of research carried out in the Amazon since the
1980s, such as the Brazil-U.S. collaboration on the Amazon Boundary
Layer Experiment (ABLE 2B) and the Anglo-Brazilian Amazonian Climate
Observations Study (ABRACOS), among others.

Approach
The LBA involves integrated, multidisciplinary research modeled after the
Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study – a previous science program
focused on the role of Northern, boreal forests in planetary processes –
and, to a lesser extent, a similar program in the Sahel in Africa( called
Hapex Sahel. Brazilian and American scientists conceived of the LBA after
having collaborated under these other scientific programs. They obtained
U.S. National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) and European
Union support for a major part of the field experiments and associated
infrastructure development. American scientists managed to stimulate
NASA interest in the LBA’s two basic questions because the latter fit
NASA’s institutional emphasis on remote sensing technologies. Advances
in satellite technology had developed the ability to detect deforestation. The
growing concern about tropical deforestation and the fact that Brazil was
the only country gathering extensive satellite information on the
phenomena made collaboration interesting to NASA. Collaboration was
also facilitated by the fact that NASA previously had sponsored research
experiments in Brazil (e.g., ABLE 2B) and had a history of collaborating
with the Brazilian Space Research Institute (INPE). INPE was centrally
involved in the conceptualization and planning of the LBA and coordinated
the LBA the first years of its existence.

Current Status
Scientific activities under the LBA were at their height in the years between
1998 and 2006. During this first, most intense phase of its existence, the
LBA was an international program co-funded by the U.S. National
Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA), the European Union and Brazil.
NASA is expected to continue to support collaborative synthesis activities
through 2008. In late 2004, the Brazilian government decided to continue
the LBA as a national program in which non-Brazilian scientists would
participate in a more limited fashion and under greater control by the
Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology. This second, lower-intensity
phase of the LBA began in 2005.
The two basic research questions guiding the the LBA during its
international phase were:
• How does the Amazon currently function as a regional entity?
• How will changes in land use and climate affect the biological, chemical and
physical functions of the Amazon, including the sustainability of development
in the region and the latter’s influence on global climate?
The LBA has involved active collaboration among researchers and
institutions from the global North and South at numerous field sites in the
Amazon and around associated data. The program has subsumed more
than 120 research projects involving about 1,700 participants (990 of whom
are Brazilians) from 63 Brazilian and 143 non-Brazilian institutions. It has
involved collaboration between predominantly Brazilian, American and
European environmental scientists and institutions.
The LBA has been pioneering in terms of developing scientific capacity and
minimizing long-standing practices of “scientific colonialism,” which is to
say, use of less developed countries’ human and material resources in
ways that minimally benefit the poorer host countries in terms of
intellectual, human, and material gains. Brazilian law requires that Brazilian
scientists serve as principal co-investigators in international scientific
projects on Brazilian soil. Brazilian LBA scientists, supported by non-
Brazilian LBA architects, have insisted that the law be observed not only on
paper but in spirit. This has encouraged the formation of friendships and
strong collaborative relations between junior and senior Brazilian scientists
and their American and European counterparts. These personal and
professional ties are likely to engender continued collaboration and
exchange after the formal end of the LBA, just as the LBA was an
outgrowth of collaboration around previous scientific experiments such as
ABLE2B, ABRACOS, BOREAS and HAPEX-Sahel. Moreover, the LBA has
institutionalized and emphasized free-of-charge data sharing and mutually
beneficial scientific collaboration between Southern and Northern
researchers in which the former are not merely support staff but full
collaborators. The LBA has also put in place an elaborate infrastructure of
scie ntific instruments, research camps, laboratories, vehicles, and skilled
people. At the end of the first phase of the program, much of this
infrastructure was turned over to Brazil to use as it sees fit. The capacity
building component contributes to the LBA’s goal of advancing sustainable
use of natural resources in the Amazon.
The LBA enjoyed annual budgets on the order of approximately US$ 12 to
15 million for the years 1998 to 2004. These costs were shared mainly by
Brazil and NASA, with Europe contributing a smaller part. Brazil is
estimated to have contributed at least half of the funding for the LBA during
this first phase when factoring in also indirect funding in the form of facilities
made available to the LBA as well as salaries of LBA-involved Brazilian
scientists and student scholarships.
Political and Legal Issues

A Landsat Image of the Amazon River, Brazil, on November 30, 2000. (Source:
NASA; Landsat.org; Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, Michigan
State University)

Brazilian political leaders have been ambivalent about the LBA. The LBA
was approved to take place on Brazilian soil because some Brazilian
political leaders considered it beneficial to Brazil through its advancement
of scientific understanding of the Amazon and through the in-built,
innovative processes of scientific capacity building. However, important
factions within the government and in Brazilian society were suspicious of
the LBA. The latter manifested itself, among other things, in a suit brought
by a group of Congressional representatives in 1999. The suit targeted
Brazilian officials responsible for approving the LBA, including the Ministers
of Science and Technology and of Foreign Relations and, even, the then-
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. They were accused of threatening
national sovereignty by authorizing the LBA, which, the representatives
charged, caused grave injury and demoralization of the country and
opened it to possible loss of Brazilian heritage. Though not founded on
known instances involving the LBA before or after 1999, key concerns were
biopiracy and the possibility that surveillance data collected under the
pretense of scientific research might be used by foreigners to scout and
subsequently exploit Brazilian natural resources.
The legal basis for the suit was that international actions and decisions with
important bearing on natural heritage need to be approved by the Brazilian
Congress. The debatable point was whether the LBA in fact was a threat to
national heritage. The administration under F.H. Cardoso had decided that
the LBA was not such a threat, and as such did not submit it to Congress
for approval before authorizing its implementation. The suit remained
unresolved at the end of the first phase of the LBA, but the Brazilian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Science and Technology
sought to meet the underpinning concerns by instating controls over the
data and knowledge produced and disseminated under the LBA, especially
with regards to campaigns to collect environmental data by means of low-
flying airplanes.

Further Reading
• Lahsen, Myanna, 2005. "Tattered or Armed by Science? Science and
Sovereignty in Brazil." Discussion paper, Science and Democracy Network
Workshop, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA.
• Lahsen, Myanna and Carlos A. Nobre, 2007. "The Challenge of Connecting
International Science and Local Level Sustainability: The Case of the LBA."
Environmental Science and Policy, 10(1):62-74.
• LBA Science Planning Group. 1996. The Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere
Experiment in Amazonia (LBA): Concise Experimental Plan.
• Siqueira, Frank. "Soberania Sobre a Amazônia É Posta Em Xeque." O Liberal
(Pará, Amazonas), 23 April 2004.
Citation

Lahsen, Myanna (Lead Author); Sidney Draggan (Topic Editor). 2008. "Large-Scale
Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia." In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds.
Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National
Council for Science and the Environment). [First published in the Encyclopedia of
Earth May 14, 2007; Last revised January 30, 2008; Retrieved November 23, 2009].