The environmental cost of light pollution

Feb 5, 2013 Alun Uncategorized No Comments Astronomy, Google, LightPollution, twt

On my to-read list today is Light Pol­lu­tion of the Moun­tain Areas in Poland by Ściężor, Kubala and Kaszowski. A quick skim sug­gests it’s about the mech­an­ics of meas­ur­ing light pol­lu­tion in Poland, but the ref­er­ences look like they could make the prob­lem more inter­est­ing. It’s not just about astro­nomy, there are meas­ur­able bio­lo­gical impacts from arti­fi­cial lighting.

It’ll be dif­fi­cult to see if there’s a sim­ilar prob­lem in the UK, because so much of it is well-lit. That means bio­lo­gical dam­age is the new nor­mal and there­fore not a prob­lem. Else­where this prob­lem is called the Shift­ing Baseline. http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_pauly_the_ocean_s_shifting_baseline.html

See also: http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/JBAA./0104//0000313.000.html

#twt   #astro­nomy   #Light­Pol­lu­tion  

Embed­ded Link

Light Pol­lu­tion of the Moun­tain Areas in Poland / Zanieczyszczenie Świetlne W Obsz­arach Gór­skich W Polsce : Archives of Envir­on­mental Pro­tec­tion
Abstract. The exist­ence of extens­ive records for the impact of night sky bright­ness on the anim­als’ beha­vior in their nat­ural envir­on­ment shows the need to invest­ig­ate the level of arti­fi­cially induce…

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