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Campaign to Protect Rural England. (2016). Night Blight: Mapping England’s light pollution and dark skies. Author.
Abstract: We can now present the most accurate ever picture of how much light is spilling up into Britain’s night skies. Detailed interactive maps have been created for England
showing districts, counties, National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs) and, at a wider scale, National Character Areas. Besides these, there are high-level maps available for Scotland and Wales, so that we can now present the most accurate ever picture of how much light is spilling up into Britain’s night sky. |
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Cox, D. T. C., Sánchez de Miguel, A., Dzurjak, S. A., Bennie, J., & Gaston, K. J. (2020). National Scale Spatial Variation in Artificial Light at Night. Remote Sensing, 12(10), 1591.
Abstract: The disruption to natural light regimes caused by outdoor artificial nighttime lighting has significant impacts on human health and the natural world. Artificial light at night takes two forms, light emissions and skyglow (caused by the scattering of light by water, dust and gas molecules in the atmosphere). Key to determining where the biological impacts from each form are likely to be experienced is understanding their spatial occurrence, and how this varies with other landscape factors. To examine this, we used data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) day/night band and the World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness, to determine covariation in (a) light emissions, and (b) skyglow, with human population density, landcover, protected areas and roads in Britain. We demonstrate that, although artificial light at night increases with human density, the amount of light per person decreases with increasing urbanization (with per capita median direct emissions three times greater in rural than urban populations, and per capita median skyglow eleven times greater). There was significant variation in artificial light at night within different landcover types, emphasizing that light pollution is not a solely urban issue. Further, half of English National Parks have higher levels of skyglow than light emissions, indicating their failure to buffer biodiversity from pressures that artificial lighting poses. The higher per capita emissions in rural than urban areas provide different challenges and opportunities for mitigating the negative human health and environmental impacts of light pollution.
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Ebbensgaard, C. L. (2019). Making sense of diodes and sodium: Vision, visuality and the everyday experience of infrastructural change. Geoforum, 103, 95–104.
Abstract: The recognition of vision as a powerful register for organising urban space locates lighting technologies at the heart of urban experience. Recently, scholars have established that lighting technologies shape not just what we see but how we see, drawing attention towards light as that ‘with which we see’. This article shifts attention from the role of lighting in shaping what and how people see, to how people make sense of changes to their visual sensorium—from what lighting infrastructures do to what is done with them. By following older residents living in the London Borough of Newham along routine travels on foot at night, I demonstrate how they make sense of the Council’s initiative to upgrade their 19,500 street-lamps with Light Emitting Diodes. I demonstrate how such infrastructural change exposes an uneven geographical distribution of and access to light and darkness with potentially detrimental consequences for the formation of public life after dark. Recognising how light infrastructures are reframed through everyday life, I demonstrate how LEDs do not necessarily produce their desired effects and how light clutter and light bleed might contribute to producing nocturnal atmospheres where people feel safe and confident. Broadening the understanding of how different technologies and light sources are important for the formation of inclusive nocturnal publics the article sets out a ‘politics of visibility’ that recognises the role of lighting in creating visibility for and of residents.
Keywords: Lighting; visual sensorium; United Kingdom
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ffrench-Constant, R., Somers-Yeates, R., Bennie, J., Economou, T., Hodgson, D., Spalding, A., et al. (2016). Light pollution is associated with earlier tree budburst across the United Kingdom. Proc Roy Soc B Biol Sci, 283(1833), 1–9.
Abstract: The ecological impact of night-time lighting is of concern because of its well-demonstrated effects on animal behaviour. However, the potential of light pollution to change plant phenology and its corresponding knock-on effects on associated herbivores are less clear. Here, we test if artificial lighting can advance the timing of budburst in trees. We took a UK-wide 13 year dataset of spatially referenced budburst data from four deciduous tree species and matched it with both satellite imagery of night-time lighting and average spring temperature. We find that budburst occurs up to 7.5 days earlier in brighter areas, with the relationship being more pronounced for later-budding species. Excluding large urban areas from the analysis showed an even more pronounced advance of budburst, confirming that the urban ‘heat-island’ effect is not the sole cause of earlier urban budburst. Similarly, the advance in budburst across all sites is too large to be explained by increases in temperature alone. This dramatic advance of budburst illustrates the need for further experimental investigation into the impact of artificial night-time lighting on plant phenology and subsequent species interactions. As light pollution is a growing global phenomenon, the findings of this study are likely to be applicable to a wide range of species interactions across the world.
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Marchant, P., Hale, J. D., & Sadler, J. P. (2020). Does changing to brighter road lighting improve road safety? Multilevel longitudinal analysis of road traffic collision frequency during the relighting of a UK city. J. Epidemiol. Community Health, .
Abstract: Background A step change in the night environment is taking place, with the large-scale installation of bright, broad-spectrum road lighting such as white light-emitting diodes (LEDs). One justification for this is a reduction in road traffic collisions (RTCs). This study aimed to estimate the effect of new lighting on personal injury RTCs within a large UK city.
Methods We analysed a 9-year time series of weekly RTC personal injury counts in 132 areas of the city using multilevel modelling. The RTC rate over a full 24-hour period was the primary outcome; darkness and daylight RTC rates were secondary. The background change in RTC rate was separated from the change associated with the number of newly installed bright lamps by including a polynomial underlying time trend for the logarithm of the mean number of collisions per week for each area. The study was based on a rigorous, predesigned and archived protocol. Results Within-area coefficients for the broad lighting effect were positive; as the number of bright lamps in an area increased, so did the RTC rate. The estimate for the increase in the within-area 24-hour RTC rate is 11% (95% CI 2% to 20%). The estimate of darkness-only RTCs is 16% (95% CI 2% to 32%). If the effect of lighting on darkness RTC rate is adjusted by that for daylight, one obtains 4% (95% CI −12% to +23%). Conclusion No evidence was found for bright lamps leading to an improvement in road safety in any of the analyses. For this city, introducing brighter road lighting may have compromised safety rather than reducing harm. |