Light Pollution – Travis Longcore

April 21, 2022

Two Light Pollution Projects Accepted to UCLA Undergraduate Research Week

Two students working in the Longcore Lab @ UCLA in the Sustainable Los Angeles Grand Challenge Undergraduate Research Program (URSP) have had presentations accepted to the Undergraduate Research & Creativity Showcase at UCLA Undergraduate Research Week. Here are their abstracts: Characterizing Nighttime Light Exposure Across Land Use and Demography Ahalya Sabaratnam and Travis Longcore As … Continue reading Two Light Pollution Projects Accepted to UCLA Undergraduate Research Week

January 5, 2020

Chicago, the Night Should Not Look Like the Day

Chicago has been replacing its high-pressure sodium lamps with 3000K LEDs. They are finding many objections to the level of glare and brightness, but the Chicago Tribune editorial board came out with a ringing endorsement of full-spectrum white light, and celebrating the loss of yellow and orange hue of high-pressure sodium. This is my response. … Continue reading Chicago, the Night Should Not Look Like the Day

February 3, 2019August 12, 2019

Lower color temperature lighting is not just for coasts

I get emails. Occasionally they reveal that things that I might have thought were obvious need to be explained. This past week it was an inquiry from an engaged advocate reporting that a local jurisdiction did not think that the advice from one of my papers on avoiding adverse effects on the environment by using … Continue reading Lower color temperature lighting is not just for coasts

June 12, 2018July 3, 2018

New paper: picking spectrum to reduce adverse effects of lights on wildlife

Back during the Ecological Consequences of Artificial Night Lighting conference in 2002, the prescient Steven Pauley made a strong argument that blue light should be avoided in outdoor lighting for human health reasons and posed the question whether it would reduce impacts on wildlife too. My position at the time was, based on the research … Continue reading New paper: picking spectrum to reduce adverse effects of lights on wildlife

May 9, 2018July 13, 2019

(Award-winning) light pollution research at USC undergraduate symposium

We participated in force in the 20th University of Southern California Undergraduate Symposium for Scholarly and Creative Work. Our contributions included: Classification System for National Park Sites Based on Nightscape Lighting Profiles (Harrison Knapp and Benjamin Banet) Spatiotemporal Analysis of Lighted Boats at Night (Eliza Gutierrez-Dewar) A Photographic Light Pollution Assessment Across Western Public Lands … Continue reading (Award-winning) light pollution research at USC undergraduate symposium

March 27, 2018

Lab Work in Knowable Magazine Profile

Reporter Stephanie Pain contributed an excellent summary of recent research on light pollution, “There Goes the Night,” with interviews and summaries of research from around the world. Knowable Magazine is the partner publication to the Annual Reviews series, which recently published a review from the Gaston lab, Impacts of Artificial Light at Night on Biological Timings. … Continue reading Lab Work in Knowable Magazine Profile

February 15, 2018February 19, 2018

Two light pollution research updates

I’m usually one to announce research results and not grant funding, but the funders put out a release and Tweet, so it is officially news that we are starting a new 2-year project: Coast Light: Actionable Science to Manage Coastal Nightscapes. The funding is from USC Sea Grant and includes in-kind contributions from many partners … Continue reading Two light pollution research updates

August 6, 2017

How bright the moon: correcting a propagated figure error in the literature

Last year, the National Park Service released our report, Artificial night lighting and protected lands: Ecological effects and management approaches (Longcore and Rich 2016), which had been in the works for quite a while. Our colleague Andrej Mohar, while enthusiastic about the report overall, pointed out that a figure that we had included of natural … Continue reading How bright the moon: correcting a propagated figure error in the literature

July 4, 2017July 4, 2017

CubeSats to measure light pollution

I had the fortune of being able to offer some examples of environmental applications in a paper by Dee Pack and Brian Hardy from Aerospace Corporation for the Small Satellite Conference this summer in Utah. We (mostly they) show the feasibility of using small satellites to measure upward radiance from Earth at night, with examples … Continue reading CubeSats to measure light pollution

April 12, 2017July 7, 2017

Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Nighttime Lighting In and Around National Parks

Yu Chuan Shan, Ben Banet, and I have been working the past couple of years on developing a monthly database of upward radiance from within and buffers around all of the National Park units in the United States. They are presenting the research today at the USC undergraduate research symposium. The results presented only scratch … Continue reading Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Nighttime Lighting In and Around National Parks