The terraformed surface of Reach after its glassing in 2552.
Terraforming is the process of altering the terrain, climate and atmosphere of a planet to suit the needs of its colonists, usually involving the insertion of flora, the introduction of substances and minerals, among many other changes. Depending on the degree of the terraformation, the process can take either few years or centuries.
History[]
Humanity was able to discover teraforming technology through urthe development of the Atmosphere Processing Plant during the mid 22nd century. During the Domus Diaspora, the UEG converted numerous environments into those suitable to human habitation. The colony ship Odyssey was the first ship to carry terraforming gear outside of the Sol system in 2232.
The UEG utilizes atmospheric processors to push the atmosphere of a planet to a tolerable composition. However, human terraforming technology has limits, with many planets being so much inhospitable that terraformation is all but impossible, resulting in the UEG searching for planets that already habitable. As they are very rare, some colonies are extremely remote from one another. Humanity uses several methods to terraform planets, such as bombarding their atmospheres with asteroids to generate a new mantle and crust, a process known to trap helium-3 into the artificial mantle, a method used on Verge. Some species, such as the naeori of Draco III were able to survive these processes duo to their natural ability to hide below the ocean.
After the end of the First Contact War, humanity started re-terraforming select colonies lost by the glassing of the Covenant, such as Reach, with assessments made by the Assembly theorizing that re-terraforming a glassed planet would take three hundred years.
The xenomorphs are able to terraform planets and habitats through the natural process of converting the local atmospere and using biomass to spread itself until the formation of a hive, which start as spores and grow into massive biomass, transforming areas good for necromorph expansion. These areas range from Installation 05 to High Charity, to covering entire planets through the Forerunner-Xenomorph War, which created Keyminds.