Meeting on Light Pollution: Challenges and Responses for Monitoring it

Light pollution has a direct impact on the environment, on astronomical observations and on the starry sky as a heritage resource of humanity. Excessive light confuses the biological clocks of humans, animals and plants with its spectral composition similar to daylight. As a result, it makes it difficult to distinguish between day and night and between the seasons to which living organisms are physiologically attuned.

Light pollution is therefore an environmental problem caused by the inappropriate use of artificial light (the pollutant) with a strong transboundary character because, under the right conditions, light can spread up to hundreds of kilometres away from its source. It can therefore affect habitats far away from the pollutant sources.

 

For this reason, the Ministry of Science and Innovation of the Spanish government, through the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, is organising, in collaboration with the Spanish Network of Studies on Light Pollution, this international scientific meeting dedicated to addressing the pressing issues surrounding light pollution and its monitoring, which is a matter of significant environmental and legal concern.