Light pollution, the inappropriate or excessive use of artificial light, has never been more prevalent and it is taking a toll on bugs, animals, and crops in the millions, often with lethal and damaging consequences. A new report in Nature highlights the growing problem as well as potential solutions.

While artificial light has been a common sight on the planet since the 1880s, the world continues to get brighter and brighter on a yearly basis. Artificially light areas have grown by 2.2 percent every year between 2012 and 2016 with a radiance growth of 1.8 percent per year. A key factor driving this is growth has been the popularity of LED lights, which are more energy efficient, brighter and have a long lifespan than traditional bulbs.

A look at street lights in Germany alone shows they could be killing millions of insects, crucial pollinators and food sources for many animals, at night. Animals from birds to bats to turtles grow confused when faced with oppressive artificial light.

The BBC's 2016's Planet Earth II, which highlighted how baby turtles inadvertently crawl to their deaths thanks to light pollution, caused such a outcry that the network was forced to issue a statement on Twitter saying that the baby turtles had in fact been saved by the crew.

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Every turtle that was seen or filmed by the #PlanetEarth2 crew was collected and put back into the sea. — BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 11, 2016

And it's not just animals. A 2017 study from the Illinois Center for Transportation shows that light pollution alters the growth of soybeans negatively, a problem for the state that leads the nation in soybean production. "Height and stage of plant maturity are both affected by trespass illuminance," the study says, noting that soybeans "can be delayed anywhere from 2 to 7 weeks" just from the effects of lights on the highway.

Just as important as direct artificial light is what scientists refer to as "skyglow." The artificial light scattered back to Earth by aerosols and clouds, skyglow is hard for humans to notice, but Kevin Gaston, a conservation specialist at the University of Exeter, tells Nature that it “almost certainly” has an effect on biodiversity. 30% of vertebrates and 60% of invertebrates are nocturnal and skyglow affects all of them, but Gaston says that it is difficult to study.

“We were too ignorant as biologists about the complexity of light as a physical phenomenon,” says Mark Gessner, director of the project known as The LakeLab, and co-leader of its artificial-light project, called Illuminating Lake Ecosystems (ILES), to Nature.

The ILES program is attempting to correct for that mistake with a study starting small, looking at zooplankton. Using 24 cylinders, each nearly 30 feet (9 meters) in diameter, and hitting them with different levels of skyglow. Elsewhere, scientists are taking creative steps like strapping light meters onto birds to understand how much light they receive.



There has been some progress in fighting back against light pollution. A region in central Idaho just became the first American Dark Sky Reserve, highlighting its dedication towards keeping light pollution at bay. Highways in Norway are experimenting with dimming lights when no drivers are around. Just because everything's getting brighter all the time doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

Source: Nature

Edit: This piece was corrected to clarify how many vertebrates and invertebrates are nocturnal

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