Biosphere 2 was and is a scientific success as described in a overview in
Wired magazine. They conclude that the facility led to "a general awareness of Earth itself as a largely-closed system that can be easily and unpredictably perturbed." [
photo credit, Univ. AZ]
Wired summarizes key advances in a number of fields, with links to comprehensive lists of scientific papers generated from Biosphere 2.