Nature, extent and ecological implications of night‐time light from road vehicles

Journal of Applied Ecology

Artificial lighting of the night‐time has brought enormous benefits to humankind, and has shaped societies in dramatic ways. Indeed, over the last hundred years or so, the introduction of electric street lighting in particular into villages, towns, and cities, has come to epitomise development and modernity. There has been rapid, and ongoing, expansion of the extent of the global area that is now directly artificially lit, including into those parts of landscapes, the protected areas, that are meant to be best shielded from anthropogenic influences (Davies, Duffy, Bennie, & Gaston, 2016; Gaston, Duffy, & Bennie, 2015). Skyglow, caused predominantly by upwardly emitted artificial light being scattered in the atmosphere, and which may reach 10s to 100s of kilometres beyond the limits of urban settlements (Biggs, Fouché, Bilki, & Zadnik, 2012; Luginbuhl, Boley, & Davis, 2014), is now estimated to be experienced by c. 23% of the global land area (Falchi et al., 2016).

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