The effects of light pollution on migratory animal behavior

Research on light pollution has grown significantly over the past decades, but our review of migratory organisms demonstrates gaps in our understanding, particularly beyond migratory birds.

Bend's dark skies are disappearing — make a difference with responsible outdoor lighting

11/11/2022 - Bend Bulletin Article

Fight Against Light

Published in Source Weekly, Bend Oregon

Outdoor lights obscure dark skies, waste energy and throw off the rhythms of all types of life. Here's what advocates are doing to protect Central Oregon's vast dark skies.

Treat artificial light like other forms of pollution, say scientists!

The Guardian, Nov 2020

Artificial light should be treated like other forms of pollution because its impact on the natural world has widened to the point of systemic disruption, research says.

Portland Dark Skies Project

The City of Portland, the largest source of light pollution in Oregon, initiated a Dark Skies Project in 2019 to reduce light pollution, requested input from residents and concerned organizations.

Supporting Documents for the Project can be found here.

Light pollution in USA and Europe: The good, the bad and the ugly

Light pollution is a worldwide problem that has a range of adverse effects on human health and natural ecosystems. Using data from the New World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness, VIIRS-recorded radiance and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data, we compared light pollution levels, and the light flux to the population size and GDP at the State and County levels in the USA and at Regional (NUTS2) and Province (NUTS3) levels in Europe. We found 6800-fold differences between the most and least polluted regions in Europe, 120-fold differences in their light flux per capita, and 267-fold differences in flux per GDP unit. Yet, we found even greater differences between US counties: 200,000-fold differences in sky pollution, 16,000-fold differences in light flux per capita, and 40,000-fold differences in light flux per GDP unit. These findings may inform policy-makers, helping to reduce energy waste and adverse environmental, cultural and health consequences associated with light pollution.

The New World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness

Artificial lights raise night sky luminance, creating the most visible effect of light pollution—artificial skyglow. Despite the increasing interest among scientists in fields such as ecology, astronomy, health care, and land-use planning, light pollution lacks a current quantification of its magnitude on a global scale. To overcome this, we present the world atlas of artificial sky luminance, computed with our light pollution propagation software using new high-resolution satellite data and new precision sky brightness measurements. This atlas shows that more than 80% of the world and more than 99% of the U.S. and European populations live under light-polluted skies. The Milky Way is hidden from more than one-third of humanity, including 60% of Europeans and nearly 80% of North Americans. Moreover, 23% of the world’s land surfaces between 75°N and 60°S, 88% of Europe, and almost half of the United States experience light-polluted nights.

Astrotourism and Night Sky Brightness Forecast: First Probabilistic Model Approach

Celestial tourism, also known as astrotourism, astronomical tourism or, less frequently, star tourism, refers to people’s interest in visiting places where celestial phenomena can be clearly observed. Stars, skygazing, meteor showers or comets, among other phenomena, arouse people’s interest, however, good night sky conditions are required to observe such phenomena. From an environmental point of view, several organisations have surfaced in defence of the protection of dark night skies against light pollution, while from an economic point of view; the idea also opens new possibilities for development in associated areas. The quality of dark skies for celestial tourism can be measured by night sky brightness (NSB), which is used to quantify the visual perception of the sky, including several light sources at a specific point on earth. The aim of this research is to model the nocturnal sky brightness by training and testing a probabilistic model using real NSB data. ARIMA and artificial neural network models have been applied to open NSB data provided by the Globe at Night international programme, with the results of this first model approach being promising and opening up new possibilities for astrotourism. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, probabilistic models have not been applied to NSB forecasting.