Abstract
The diurnal cycle of light and dark is one of the strongest environmental factors for life on Earth. Many species in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems use the level of ambient light to regulate their metabolism, growth, and behavior. The sky glow caused by artificial lighting from urban areas disrupts this natural cycle, and has been shown to impact the behavior of organisms, even many kilometers away from the light sources. It could be hypothesized that factors that increase the luminance of the sky amplify the degree of this “ecological light pollution”. We show that cloud coverage dramatically amplifies the sky luminance, by a factor of 10.1 for one location inside of Berlin and by a factor of 2.8 at 32 km from the city center. We also show that inside of the city overcast nights are brighter than clear rural moonlit nights, by a factor of 4.1. These results have important implications for choronobiological and chronoecological studies in urban areas, where this amplification effect has previously not been considered.
Highlights
The ambient light level is one of the strongest factors driving animal behavior and chronobiology, evidenced by the dramatic split of most species into diurnal or nocturnal activity
The response of the TSL237S has a small, stable, temperature dependence, so the Sky Quality Meter’’ (SQM) contains an internal temperature sensor which is used by the SQM software to provide compensation
Using two SQMs, we studied changes in the sky brightness of Berlin in a rural and urban location over a period of 152 calendar days
Summary
The ambient light level is one of the strongest factors driving animal behavior and chronobiology, evidenced by the dramatic split of most species into diurnal or nocturnal activity. It is unsurprising that changes in ambient nighttime lighting result in behavioral and physiological changes for many nocturnal species [1], whether in terrestrial [2,3,4], marine [5], or freshwater [6,7,8] habitats. With the exception of life in the deep oceans and underground, all life on Earth has evolved to live in an environment of cycles of light and dark, with a substantial proportion of the global biodiversity being nocturnal The rapid global increase of artificial light has fundamentally transformed nightscapes, both in terms of quantity, increasing several percent each year, and in quality (color spectra) [13]
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