A case study of light pollution in France
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
A case study of light pollution in France N. Aksaker1,2
˘ 6 · S.K. Yerli3 · Z. Kurt4,2 · M. Bayazit4 · A. Aktay5 · M.A. Erdogan
Received: 30 May 2020 / Accepted: 15 September 2020 / Published online: 24 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract In this study, we investigate the effects of light pollution in France using GIS data which was first used in Aksaker et al. (Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 493:1204, 2020) (so called astroGIS database - astrogis.org). A subset of Artificial Light layer of astroGIS database has been adapted for years between January 2012 and December 2019. During 2019, half a million of lumen has been released into space from the total surface area of France. Annual light pollution in France has a decreasing trend. France continues to have potential Dark Sky Park locations for example cities like Cantal, Lot, Lozère and Creuse having the lowest light pollution values. Light pollution is strongly correlated with population (R 2 0.85) and GDP (R 2 0.84). In addition, half of the observatories remain under the light polluted areas.
1 Introduction
1
Adana Organised Industrial Zones Vocational School of Technical Science, University of Çukurova, 01410, Adana, Turkey
2
Space Science and Solar Energy Research and Application Center (UZAYMER), University of Çukurova, 01330, Adana, Turkey
3
Department of Physics, Orta Do˘gu Teknik Üniversitesi, 06800, Ankara, Turkey
4
Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System, University of Cukurova, 01330, Adana, Turkey
5
Turkish State Meteorological Service, Regional Forecast Center, 01360, Adana, Turkey
The world surface continuously perturbed by the humanity and this can be seen from space at night. This effect is identified as Artificial Light at Night, namely AL or simply light pollution (Cavazzani et al. 2020; Mendoza et al. 2020; Simons et al. 2020). Light pollution is one of the most damaging effects for astronomy. At the moment, one-third of humanity is not aware of the Milky Way because they cannot see it. Moreover, 80% of the world population lives in light polluted regions (Falchi et al. 2016). Astronomical objects simply disappear in the night sky when telescopes point to them in observatories which are affected by the cumulative light above the large cities (Gronkowski et al. 2018). Horizontal beams of artificial light emerging from the large cities have great harmful effects on the observatories centered on a circle with radius around 50– 100 km (Luginbuhl et al. 2009). The Technical Office for the Protection of Sky Quality (OTPC; part of IAC in Spain) provides advice on the implementation of the “Sky Law” (Number: 31/1988) which protects the astronomical quality of observatories in the Canaries from light, radioelectrical and atmospheric pollutions, and aviation routes. France, as an EU member state, acted further and introduced a new regulation on light pollution to prevent emission of light in outdoor spaces1 . On the other hand, the natural relationship between artificial light and human activity su
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