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Elvidge, C. D., Imhoff, M. L., Baugh, K. E., Hobson, V. R., Nelson, I., Safran, J., et al. (2001). Night-time lights of the world: 1994–1995. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 56(2), 81–99.
Abstract: The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS) has a unique low-light imaging capability developed for the detection of clouds using moonlight. In addition to moonlit clouds, the OLS also detects lights from human settlements, fires, gas flares, heavily lit fishing boats, lightning and the aurora. By analysing the location, frequency, and appearance of lights observed in an image time series, it is possible to distinguish four primary types of lights present at the earth's surface: human settlements, gas flares, fires, and fishing boats. We have produced a global map of the four types of light sources as observed during a 6-month time period in 1994–1995. We review a number of environmental applications that have been developed or proposed based on the night-time light data. We examine the relationship between area of lighting, population, economic activity, electric power consumption, and energy related carbon emissions for 200 nations, representing 99% of the world's population.
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Raap, T., Thys, B., Grunst, A. S., Grunst, M. L., Pinxten, R., & Eens, M. (2018). Personality and artificial light at night in a semi-urban songbird population: No evidence for personality-dependent sampling bias, avoidance or disruptive effects on sleep behaviour. Environmental Pollution, in press, in press.
Abstract: Light pollution or artificial light at night (ALAN) is an increasing, worldwide challenge that affects many aspects of animal behaviour. Interestingly, the response to ALAN varies widely among individuals within a population and variation in personality (consistent individual differences in behaviour) may be an important factor explaining this variation. Consistent individual differences in exploration behaviour in particular may relate to the response to ALAN, as increasing evidence indicates its relation with how individuals respond to novelty and how they cope with anthropogenic modifications of the environment. Here, we assayed exploration behaviour in a novel environment as a proxy for personality variation in great tits (Parus major). We observed individual sleep behaviour over two consecutive nights, with birds sleeping under natural dark conditions the first night and confronted with ALAN inside the nest box on the second night, representing a modified and novel roosting environment. We examined whether roosting decisions when confronted with a camera (novel object), and subsequently with ALAN, were personality-dependent, as this could potentially create sampling bias. Finally, we assessed whether experimentally challenging individuals with ALAN induced personality-dependent changes in sleep behaviour.
Slow and fast explorers were equally likely to roost in a nest box when confronted with either a camera or artificial light inside, indicating the absence of personality-dependent sampling bias or avoidance of exposure to ALAN. Moreover, slow and fast explorers were equally disrupted in their sleep behaviour when challenged with ALAN. Whether other behavioural and physiological effects of ALAN are personality-dependent remains to be determined. Moreover, the sensitivity to disturbance of different behavioural types might depend on the behavioural context and the specific type of challenge in question. In our increasingly urbanized world, determining whether the effects of anthropogenic stressors depend on personality type will be of paramount importance as it may affect population dynamics.
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Asanuma, I., Hasegawa, D., Yamaguchi, T., Park, J. G., & Mackin, K. J. (2018). Island Activities Detected by VIIRS and Validation with AIS. Ars, 07(03), 171–182.
Abstract: A possibility to monitor the reclamation activities by remote sensing was discussed. The lights observed in the night time by Day Night Band (DNB) of Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), ocean color observed in the day time by visible bands of VIIRS were the tools to monitor the surface activities, and the Automated Information System (AIS) was used to verify the types and number of vessels associated with the reclamation activities. The lights as the radiance from the surface were monitored by the object based analysis, where the object was defined as a radius of 5 km from the center of the Mischief Reef in the South China Sea (SCS). The time history of surface lights exhibited the increase of the radiance from January to May 2015 and the radiance was kept in the certain level to December 2016 with some variations. The ocean color, chlorophyll-a concentration as a proxy of sediments, showed an increase from February to June 2015 and returned to a low concentration in August 2015. According to the historical data of AIS, the number of dredgers has increased from February to August 2015 and the maximum number of dredgers was recorded in June 2015. The timing of increase of lights from surface, increase of chlorophyll-a concentration, and increase of number of vessels are consistent.
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Ma, T. (2018). Quantitative Responses of Satellite-Derived Nighttime Lighting Signals to Anthropogenic Land-Use and Land-Cover Changes across China. Remote Sensing, 10(9), 1447.
Abstract: Remotely sensed artificial lighting radiances at night can provide spatially explicit proxy measures of the magnitude of human activity. Satellite-derived nighttime light images, mainly provided by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) day/night band (DNB), have been increasingly used to study demographic and socioeconomic activities for a wide range of issues—for instance, human population dynamics, economic growth, and urbanization process—at multiple scales. In practice, the lack of texture information regarding man-made surfaces would usually lead to substantial difficulty in delineating the spatial dynamics in human settlements due to the diverse distributions of artificial nocturnal lighting sources, which are closely related to the predominant land-use/land-cover (LULC) types and their evolutions. An understanding of how nighttime lighting signals respond to synchronous anthropogenic LULC changes, therefore, is crucially important for the spatiotemporal investigations of human settlement dynamics. In this study, we used DMSP-derived nighttime light (NTL) data and Landsat-derived LULC maps to quantitatively estimate the pixel-level responses of NTL signals to different types of human-induced LULC conversions between 1995 and 2010 across China. Our results suggest that the majority (>70%) of pixel-level LULC conversions into artificial lands (including urban, rural, and built-up lands) might show a statistically significant increase in nighttime brightness with an average >20 (in digital number, DN) step change in nighttime lights (dNTL), both of which are distinctly higher than that in the LULC conversions into non-man-made surfaces on the whole. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve-based analysis implies that we might have an average chance of ~90% to identify the nationwide LULC conversions into man-made surfaces from all types of conversions through the observed changes in artificial nocturnal luminosity signals. Moreover, ROC curve-based analyses also yield two nation-level optimal dNTL thresholds of 4.8 and 7.8 DN for recognizing newly emerged three types of artificial lands and urban lands between 1995 and 2010 across the entire country, respectively. In short, our findings reveal fundamental insights into the quantitative connections between the anthropogenic LULC changes and the corresponding responses of synchronous nightlight signals at the pixel-level, which are generally essential for further applications of satellite-derived nocturnal luminosity data in the spatiotemporal investigations of human settlement dynamics.
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Ma, Q., Tan, Y., Chen, X., Chen, S., Sun, Y., & Zhou, B. (2018). Regulation of the MAPK signaling pathway by miR-421-5p in rats under light pollution. Int J Mol Med, in press, in press.
Abstract: The present study aimed to explore the difference in the expression profiles of ovarian microRNA sequences in rats in a light pollution environment and rats in a normal light environment. Rats in the control group were exposed to 12h light/dark cycles, while rats in the model group were continuously exposed to 24h light. The ovaries were extracted from the two groups of rats, and Illumina HiSeq 2500 highthroughput sequencing technology was used to detect the differences in microRNA (miRNA) expression among the two groups. Fluorescence quantitative reverse transcriptionpolymerase chain reaction was used to verify the differential expression of miRNA. The present study was designed to experimentally validate the interaction between miR4215p and mitogenactivated protein kinase (MAPK) 7 by using the dualluciferase reporter system, and to explore the expression of proteins in the MAPK signaling pathway with a lentiviral vectormediated small hairpin RNA interference against microRNA4215p. The expression of 45 miRNAs was significantly different. In total, 13 miRNAs were upregulated, of which 5 miRNA sequences were known and 8 were predicted. Furthermore, 32 miRNAs were downregulated, of which 11 miRNA sequences were known and 21 were predicted. The results of the luciferase reporter assay confirmed the targeting association between miR4215p and MAPK7. The expression levels of MAPK and genes in its downstream signaling pathways, including cFos, CREB and cMyc, were downregulated when miR4215p was overexpressed and upregulated when miR4215p was silenced. The differential expression of miRNAs may serve an important role in the development of the ovary in a light pollution environment. miR4215p may regulate ovarian growth and development by targeting the MAPK signaling pathway in light polluted rat ovaries.
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