Bring on the night, say National Park visitors in new study
Natural wonders like tumbling waterfalls, jutting rock faces and banks of wildflowers have long drawn visitors to America's national parks and inspired efforts to protect their beauty.
According to a study published Sept. 4 in Park Science, visitors also value and seek to protect a different kind of threatened natural resource in the parks: dark nighttime skies.
Almost 90 percent of visitors to Maine's Acadia National Park interviewed for the study agreed or strongly agreed with the statements, "Viewing the night sky is important to me" and "The National Park Service should work to protect the ability of visitors to see the night sky."
Acadia National Park will hold its annual Night Skies Festival Sept. 10 through 14 this year.
According to the study, led by Robert Manning of the University of Vermont, 99 percent of the world's skies suffer from light pollution and two-thirds of Americans can't see the Milky Way from their homes.
Most light threatening the National Parks comes from development, the study says. Light from cities or towns can reach parks from as far away as 250 miles.
"It's a typical story," Manning says. "We begin to value things as they disappear. Fortunately, darkness in a renewable resource and we can we can do things to restore it in the parks."
In addition to gauging the value to park visitors of a dark nighttime sky, the study also provides data to park managers at Acadia - and by extension, other parks - enabling them to develop visitor-driven plans for setting light pollution targets.
Related Stories
Light pollution is getting worse across much of the globe, with the exception of countries like Yemen and Syria:
A study of pictures of Earth by night has revealed that artificial light is growing brighter and more extensive every year. Between 2012 and 2016, the planet's artificially lit outdoor area grew by more than 2% per year. Scientists say a "loss of night" in many countries is having negative consequences for "flora, fauna, and human well-being".
A team published the findings in the journal Science Advances. Their study used data from a Nasa satellite radiometer - a device designed specifically to measure the brightness of night-time light. It showed that changes in brightness over time varied greatly by country. Some of the world's "brightest nations", such as the US and Spain, remained the same. Most nations in South America, Africa and Asia grew brighter. [...]
- In 2016, the American Medical Association officially recognised the "detrimental effects of poorly designed, high-intensity LED lighting", saying it encouraged communities to "minimise and control blue-rich environmental lighting by using the lowest emission of blue light possible to reduce glare. The sleep-inducing hormone melatonin is particularly sensitive to blue light.
- A recent study published in the journal Nature [DOI: 10.1038/nature23288] [DX] revealed that artificial light was a threat to crop pollination - reducing the pollinating activity of nocturnal insects.
- Research in the UK revealed that trees in more brightly lit areas burst their buds up to a week earlier [open, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2016.0813] [DX] than those in areas without artificial lighting.
- A study published earlier this year found that urban light installations "dramatically altered" the behaviour of nocturnally migrating birds.
Lead researcher Christopher Kyba from the German Research Centre for Geoscience in Potsdam said that the introduction of artificial light was "one of the most dramatic physical changes human beings have made to our environment".
Also at Sky & Telescope, NPR, and EurekAlert.
Artificially lit surface of Earth at night increasing in radiance and extent (open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1701528) (DX)
Previously: Bring on the Night, say National Park Visitors in New Study
Light Pollution Prevents 80% of North Americans From Seeing the Milky Way
Study Shows That Artificial Lights Deter Nocturnal Pollinators
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @01:09AM
We can't have darkness! Sandniggers will sneak up on your children and convert them to Islam! You don't want your children to become Mooslims, do you? THink OF the CHidlren!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Walzmyn on Monday September 07 2015, @01:28AM
I grew up in the country. We had a pretty good view of the sky. My city wife loved the dates I would take her on out of town so she could see what she never saw growing up.
Then we got a chance to spend a week on Lake Powell. It's a class 1 night sky; if you don't have a light with you, there's not one. And if God put a star in the sky, you can see it.
I only thought I'd seen the sky until that trip, it was amazing what it looks like with absolutely no artificial light mucking things up.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday September 07 2015, @02:18AM
A true dark sky is definitely something you don't know until you know, and never fails to disappoint unlike most other bullshit touristy recommendations.
First time I saw one was in Arizona's White Mountains somewhere around Pinetop-Lakeside. The most striking feature is how many more stars you can see than you do around the city at night -- it's a spooky, surreal effect [wordpress.com] that makes the sky feel "lit-up" like glitter (or perhaps the interior of a high-end haunted house).
The contrast is also much better, so the effect of the "glitter" is more luminous.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @08:14AM
From the rest of your post I guess you meant exactly the opposite of what you wrote here.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Monday September 07 2015, @02:34PM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @04:50AM
But at least my neighbors feel better about themselves while they sleep with the porchlight on and the massive spotlight they had the city put in my yard.
I encourage everyone I know to turn the lights off at night. I have seen the night sky without lights. It is amazing. City night sky is a dull grey haze. :(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @07:11AM
Close to the Continental Divide, North America, January? Cross-country skiing by nothing but star-light, never saw a sky so bright before or since. The ice crystals covering the ground probably helped.
(Score: 3, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Monday September 07 2015, @07:41AM
My city wife loved the dates I would take her on out of town
I hope your country wife didn't find out.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 5, Informative) by TrumpetPower! on Monday September 07 2015, @04:22AM
You know what the Milky Way looks like? A band of light from hundreds of millions of stars too small and faint to make out individually?
When there's no light pollution and no clouds and no moon...that's what the entire sky looks like. If the Milky Way is up, it's even brighter. The zodiacal light is pretty bright, too -- a beacon pointing to where the Sun disappeared over the horizon long after the last rays of the Sun in the atmosphere have been fully shadowed by the Earth. It's the Sun lighting up the dust in the plane of the Solar System -- essentially, you're looking at the Asteroid Belt.
If it's dark you're looking for...you'll have to look down, not up. One of the most frightening sights I've ever seen...I was at the rim of the Grand Canyon photographing a very minor comet that was chasing a crescent moon. I stayed until full dark to admire the sky and to play around with some constellation photos. When I finally packed it in for the night and turned on my headlamp to pack up my stuff and drag it to the car, I shined the (very bright) light over the edge of the Canyon rim a few feet away...and saw nothing. Pure blackness. (For obvious reasons -- the ground below was literally miles away, and mostly shadowed even by what feeble starlight there was.) Scared the shit out of me on a very, very primal level.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday September 07 2015, @09:22AM
It is a lot of fun to go deep into a cave and then turn the lights out. I know friends who have had total light failures while km underground and had to crawl/feel their way out.
(Score: 1) by Walzmyn on Monday September 07 2015, @10:28AM
Oh yes. That same lake Powell trip I referenced above began with a night's stay at the Grand Canyon. We arrived well past dark but I walked out to the little knee wall they had at the edge of the rim. It was spooky as hell. There was some light back at the hotel a good ways behind me, then over this wall was just black. The ground could have been an inch away or miles there was no way to know, nothing to see. It actually gave me a lot more of that stomach dropping feeling than the next morning when I looked over that cliff and saw just how far down the first bounce would be.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Monday September 07 2015, @09:11AM
> According to the study, led by Robert Manning of the University of Vermont, 99 percent of the world's skies suffer from light pollution and two-thirds of Americans can't see the Milky Way from their homes.
Call bullshit on that stat. So way out there in the pacific/atlantic? That's light polluted is it? In which case where is the 1 % which is not polluted? Some nubbin on the tip of Antarctica?
FTFA:
> Light from cities or towns can reach parks from as far away as 250 miles.
How is this consistent with statsoid above?
So basically they have made up some junk statistics and done a questionnaire based on a highly selective sample of people which shows what they want it to show.
Junk.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Monday September 07 2015, @02:31PM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday September 07 2015, @02:57PM
> 99 percent of the world's skies
> one might imagine that the scope of the lands mass taken into account might be limited to populated areas
You are probably right - just that is not what TFA says; 'the world' I take to refer approximately to a sphere 6400 km in radius. Hence the statistic quoted is bullshit. It is probably a misquote, but for me it casts a shadow over the whole article/study.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @04:01PM
Humans instinctively associate light with safety and security, good luck overcoming that.