Sustainable Lighting and Light Pollution - A Special Issue in Memory of Dr. Thomas Posch and Dr. Abraham Haim

Dear Colleagues,

The scope of this Special Issue is to put together a series of high-level papers treating Light Pollution to a holistic manner that goes from technological advances to policies, passing through impacts on biotopes and human health. This approach will place this special issue in a pole-position in today's literature. Beyond its evident scientific interest, this special issue ambition to contribute to awareness raising in destination of decision- and policy-makers.

Human being are not night animals. Their poor night vision and primitive fear of the dark are reflected in an imperative need to use artificial light to illuminate their environment. Since post-World War II, because it was considered as a necessity, a means of security, and an attraction or valorisation, city lighting growth was literally exponential. The phenomenal rise of public lighting is manifested today by at least hundred million lighting points illuminating our cities worldwide, whose annual electricity consumption represents roughly more than 200 TWh. Furthermore, lighting constitutes up to 25% of the budget of the rural small-size cites, corresponding to roughly 50% of their electricity bill.

This uncontrollable growth is no longer sustainable, and a drastic reduction in energy consumption needs to be imposed. However, beyond the financial and energy resources that it absorbs, the urban space's artificial lighting overflows its objective, by polluting our nights to the point that, in our modern megacities, the stars disappear from the night sky, when just 100 years ago, the Milky Way could be observed from almost everywhere. Apart from the fact that stars are no longer visible, the scientific community is increasingly interested in the direct and indirect impacts of artificial lighting on biodiversity. Several experimental studies have shown that artificial light disturbs ecosystems and could play a significant role in the decline of species whose role in the ecosystem, already weakened by human presence, is not yet fully known. Similarly, some studies have recently shown that stray light may have direct or indirect effects on human health and mood.

Light pollution, unlike other forms of contamination and waste, remains largely overlooked and unregulated in many countries. It is often exacerbated by excessive, misdirected, or obtrusive uses of light that is difficult to explain today. Measuring light pollution, quantifying the impact on biodiversity, and building reliable and robust simulation tools that allow for predicting the impact of new technologies in light pollution, are today open topics that need rapid and precise answers.

Thus, scientific evidence highlighting the negative impacts of artificial lighting in connection with the strong actions from associations of militant people have contributed to a spectacular awareness being raised at a political level in many countries. As a consequence, light pollution is now taken into consideration in more and more national environmental protection and territorial development policies.

We invite you to contribute to this Issue by submitting research articles or comprehensive reviews in all of the above-mentioned fields, in relation to light pollution. Papers selected for this Special Issue will be subject to a rigorous peer-review procedure, with the aim of a rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications.

References:

1. Schulte-Römer, N.; Dannemann, E.; Meier, J. Light Pollution – A Global Discussion; UFZ: Leipzig, Germany, 2018, pp. 248.
2. Jones, B.A. Spillover health effects of energy efficiency investments: Quasi-experimental evidence from the Los Angeles LED streetlight program. Environ. Econ. Manag. 2018, 88, 283–299.
3. Kocifajn, M. Multiple scattering contribution to the diffuse light of a night sky: A model which embraces all orders of scattering. Quant. Spectrosc. Radiat. Transf. 2018, 206, 260–272.
4. Aubé, M. Physical behaviour of anthropogenic light propagation into the nocturnal environment. Trans. R. Soc. B. 2015, 370, 20140117.
5. Bennie, J.; Davies, T.W.; Inger, R.; Gaston, K.J. Mapping artificial light scapes for ecological studies’, Methods Ecol. Evol. 2014, 5, 534–540.
6. Baddiley, C. Light pollution modelling, and measurements at Malvern hills AONB, of county conversion to blue rich LEDs. Quant. Spectrosc. Radiat. Transf. 2018, 219, 142–173.
7. Hölker, F.; Moss, T.; Griefahn, B. et al. The Dark Side of Light: A Transdisciplinary Research Agenda for Light Pollution Policy. Soc. 2010, 15, 13.
8. Commission Internationale de l’Éclairage (CIE). Guidelines for Minimizing Sky Glow, CIE Technical Report 126-1997; CIE: Vienna, Austria, 1997.
9. Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA). Technical Memorandum on Light Trespass: Research, Results and Recommendations, TM-11-00; IESNA: New York, USA, 2000.
10. Irwin, A. The dark side of light: how artificial lighting is harming the natural world. (2018). Available online: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00665-7.
11. Azam, C; Le Viol, I.; Bas, Y.; Zissis, G. et al. Evidence for distance and illuminance thresholds in the effects of artificial lighting on bat activity. Landsc. Urban Plan. 2018, 175, 123–135.

Prof. Dr. Georges Zissis
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.