Updates on research and publications
Colleagues Scott Loss, Tom Will, Pete Marra and I published an article a month or so in Biological Invasions, titled “Responding to misinformation and criticisms regarding United States cat predation estimates.” The purpose of the article was to address the spurious criticisms that have been leveled against estimates of predation by free-roaming cats published by … Continue reading Not your usual correction
Longcore, T., L. Almaleh, B. Chetty, K. Francis, R. Freidin, C.-S. Huang, B Pickett, D. Schreck, B. Scruggs, E. Shulman, A. Swauger, A. Tashnek, M. Wright, and E. E. Boydston. 2018. Wildlife corridor use and environmental impact assessment: a southern California case study. Cities and the Environment11(1):art4. Abstract Environmental planners often rely on transportation structures … Continue reading New paper: underpass use by 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
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
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
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
A third paper from our collaboration with Scott Loss and post-doc Shishir Paudel at Oklahoma State University has been published in Ecosphere. This paper analyzes the vegetation data collected as Shishir searched for invasive earthworms on the island. Determinants of native and non-native plant community structure on an oceanic island Shishir Paudel, Juan C. Benavides, Beau MacDonald, Travis … Continue reading Drivers of plant community structure on San Clemente Island
I’m pleased to have been asked to contribute to the most recent roundtable on the interdisciplinary blog, The Nature of Cities. Hop on over to join the discussion: Imagine an “ecological certification” for urban design. What are such a certification’s key elements? Continue reading Forum on ecological certification for urban design
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
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
Travis Longcore 