Light Pollution: The Global View

Proceedings of the International Conference on Light Pollution, La Serena, Chile, held 5-7 March 2002

The effects of light pollution on flora, fauna -including humans and their widely varying night-time activities- are often subtle and need extensive field studies to be quantified in a sensible manner. Some of the highlights were: The presentation of the 1st world atlas of artificial night sky brightness (Cinzano et al.); the article by the International Darksky Association on their world-wide efforts to curb light pollution (Alvarez del Castillo et al.); the laws controlling light pollution implemented in Spain (Diaz et al.) and Chile (Sanhueza et al.), an overview of the work on radio frequency protection of sites (Cohen et al.) and the excellent introduction to the topic from the Chilean point of view (Daud). Related topics in the book are light pollution education, aircraft contrails, space advertising (with an added document provided by the relevant UN commission), and an experiment on involving the population of an entire country in measuring sky brightness, by using the internet and the media. The text is aimed at professionals from a wide range of disciplines related to lighting and its effects on the night-time environment in the broadest sense of the word. Lay persons interested in this emerging multi-disciplinary field can also find much of interest in this book.