Commentary: Brightness of the Night Sky Affects Loggerhead (Caretta caretta) Sea Turtle Hatchling Misorientation but Not Nest Site Selection

Longcore, Travis; Duriscoe, Dan M.; Aubé, Martin; Jechow, Andreas; Kyba, Christopher C. M.; Pendoley, Kellie

doi:10.3389/fmars.2020.00706

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Some ALAN researchers have adapted the use of a simple radiometer, the Sky Quality Meter (SQM) that has its own spectral band (Hänel et al, 2018), which can be extended to multiple color channels (Kyba et al, 2012;Sánchez de Miguel et al, 2017). The meaningfulness of single point SQM measurements for biodiversity is, however, questionable and can be used in the wrong context (Longcore et al, 2020). Biologists tend to measure either irradiance or radiance in different spectral bands (e.g., photosynthetically active radiation-PAR) and sometimes report W (Watts) in micromole photons per seconds (µmol/s).…”

Section: Interdisciplinary Barriers To Measuring Nocturnal Lightmentioning

confidence: 99%

11 Pressing Research Questions on How Light Pollution Affects Biodiversity

et al. 2021

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Artificial light at night (ALAN) is closely associated with modern societies and is rapidly increasing worldwide. A dynamically growing body of literature shows that ALAN poses a serious threat to all levels of biodiversity—from genes to ecosystems. Many “unknowns” remain to be addressed however, before we fully understand the impact of ALAN on biodiversity and can design effective mitigation measures. Here, we distilled the findings of a workshop on the effects of ALAN on biodiversity at the first World Biodiversity Forum in Davos attended by several major research groups in the field from across the globe. We argue that 11 pressing research questions have to be answered to find ways to reduce the impact of ALAN on biodiversity. The questions address fundamental knowledge gaps, ranging from basic challenges on how to standardize light measurements, through the multi-level impacts on biodiversity, to opportunities and challenges for more sustainable use.

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Section: Interdisciplinary Barriers To Measuring Nocturnal Lightmentioning

confidence: 99%

11 Pressing Research Questions on How Light Pollution Affects Biodiversity

et al. 2021

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“… Light brightness measurements from an SQM directed toward the horizon on a sea turtle nesting beach have been described as untrustworthy and non-repeatable because of high variance between measurements [1 , 2] . The present data are important because of the contribution to a test of this hypothesis.…”

Section: Value Of the Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Light brightness data near sea turtle nests as measured from the horizon and zenith using a Sky Quality Meter

et al. 2022

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“…The SQM provides a value in units of mags/arcsec 2 that can be roughly approximated to a luminance value (Hänel et al 2018). The SQM is designed to measure at the zenith and should be used with care in the context of biological studies (Longcore et al ., 2020). There are attempts to establish more intuitive units for the night sky brightness like the ‘natural sky unit’ and the ‘dark sky unit’ (see Kolláth et al ., 2020), but so far none of them has been standardised.…”

Section: Brief Overview Of Light Measurement Basicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, it should be only complementary to other ground‐based measurements (ideally with multi‐spectral imaging devices) because a zenith night sky brightness value alone is not the ideal parameter for insect studies. Furthermore, the SQM should not be used beyond its scope (Longcore et al ., 2020). Night‐time remote sensing for large‐scale monitoring: Long‐term changes of ALAN over large areas can be estimated by using night‐time light remote sensing (Levin et al ., 2020).…”

Section: Checklist For Study Design and Light Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing long‐term effects of artificial light at night on insects: what is missing and how to get there

Kalinkat

Grubisić

Jechow

et al. 2021

Insect Conserv Diversity

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1. Widespread and significant declines of insect population abundances and biomass are currently one of the most pressing issues in entomology, ecology and conservation biology. It has been suggested that artificial light at night is one major driver behind this trend.2. Recent advances in the gathering and analysis of long-term data sets of insect population and biomass trends, however, have mostly focused on the effects of climate change and agricultural intensification.3. We posit here that adequate assessment of artificial night at light that would be required to evaluate its role as a driver of insect declines is far from trivial. Currently its implementation into entomological monitoring programmes and long-running ecological experiments is hampered by several challenges that arise due to (i) its relatively late appearance as a biodiversity threat on the research agenda and (ii) the interdisciplinary nature of the research field where biologists, physicists and engineers still need to develop a set of standardised assessment methods that are both biologically meaningful and easy to implement.4. As more studies that address these challenges are urgently needed, this article aims to provide a short overview of the few existing studies that have attempted to investigate longer-term effects of artificial light at night on insect populations. 5. To improve the quality and relevance of studies addressing artificial light at night and its effect on insects, we present a set of best practise recommendations where this field needs to be heading in the coming years and how to achieve it.

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Commentary: Brightness of the Night Sky Affects Loggerhead (Caretta caretta) Sea Turtle Hatchling Misorientation but Not Nest Site Selection

Cited by 8 publications

References 10 publications

11 Pressing Research Questions on How Light Pollution Affects Biodiversity

11 Pressing Research Questions on How Light Pollution Affects Biodiversity

Light brightness data near sea turtle nests as measured from the horizon and zenith using a Sky Quality Meter

Assessing long‐term effects of artificial light at night on insects: what is missing and how to get there

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