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Advancing Knowledge, Awareness, and Solutions for a Brighter Marine Future

Interactive ALAN mapping tool

This online interactive atlas allows environmental managers to explore underwater marine light pollution around the world in combination with other pollutants and key habitats. The ALAN atlas is a measure of the depth to which biologically important light pollution penetrates into the oceans.

PML – Marine Light Pollution

A short video made by Plymouth Marine Laboratory about marine light pollution research across the city of Plymouth, UK.

PML Research Brief – Marine Light Pollution

A short briefing document for non-scientists about marine light pollution, ongoing research, new tools and considerations for management.

A global atlas of artificial light at night under the sea

This global dataset provides the critical depth (Zc) to which biologically important ALAN penetrates into the sea at ~1km resolution. Files are available in netCDF format and can be directly imported into most GIS software. The atlas is broken down into continental tiles. A tile is given for each month of the year across the year 2020 to account for seasonal differences in ocean climatology that affect light penetration (e.g. phytoplankton). The monthly mapped climatologies are also available to download. See Smyth et al. (2021) for detailed description of the mapping approach. https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2021.00049

GPS tracks of Cory’s shearwater fledglings in relation to light pollution in Tenerife Canary Islands

Movement trajectories in the synchronicity of ten Cory’s shearwater Calonectris borealis fledglings tracked with GPS-GSM devices. Ring refers to the unique ring codes of the birds. The animation shows the irradiance values (nW/cm2/sr), as a proxy of light pollution (bluish), taken from a cloud-free composite of VIIRS nighttime lights corresponding to November 2019. Animations were built with the package moveVis of the R statistical software ( Schwalb-Willmann et al., 2020) and they are part of Rodríguez et al. (2022) study. More info: Rodríguez A, Rodríguez B, Acosta Y and Negro JJ (2022) Tracking Flights to Investigate Seabird Mortality Induced by Artificial Lights. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 9: 786557. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2021.786557 https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.786557

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