The Ecological Economics of Light Pollution: Impacts on Ecosystem Service Value

Light pollution has detrimental impacts on wildlife, human health, and ecosystem functions and services. This paper explores the impact of light pollution on the value of ecosystem services. We use the Simplified All-Sky Light Pollution Ratio (sALR) as a proxy for the negative impact of light pollut...

وصف كامل

التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
الحاوية / القاعدة:Remote Sensing
المؤلفون الرئيسيون: Sharolyn J. Anderson, Ida Kubiszewski, Paul C. Sutton
التنسيق: مقال
اللغة:الإنجليزية
منشور في: MDPI AG 2024-07-01
الموضوعات:
الوصول للمادة أونلاين:https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/16/14/2591
الوصف
الملخص:Light pollution has detrimental impacts on wildlife, human health, and ecosystem functions and services. This paper explores the impact of light pollution on the value of ecosystem services. We use the Simplified All-Sky Light Pollution Ratio (sALR) as a proxy for the negative impact of light pollution and the Copernicus PROBA-V Global Landcover Database as our proxy of ecosystem service value based on previously published ecosystem service values associated with a variety of landcovers. We use the sALR value to ‘degrade’ the value of ecosystem services. This results in a 40% reduction in ecosystem service value in those areas of the world with maximum levels of light pollution. Using this methodology, the estimate of the annual loss of ecosystem service value due to light pollution is USD 3.4 trillion. This represents roughly 3% of the total global value of ecosystem services and 3% of the global GDP, estimated at roughly USD 100 trillion in 2022. A summary of how these losses are distributed amongst the world’s countries and landcovers is also presented.
تدمد:2072-4292