Abstract
Landscape lighting is a source of great pleasure, extending use of outdoor space into nighttime hours. Outdoor lighting, however, can be either well designed, or excessive and inappropriate. Extravagant lighting can be wonderful for temporary effects, but as a permanent landscape feature it wastes resources and causes direct damage to living things.
At night make me one with the darkness; in the morning make me one with the light.
—Wendell Berry, 1980
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Notes
- 1.
John Schaeffer and Real Goods staff, The Book of Light (Ukiah CA: Real Goods, 1996), 4–11, discusses energy use and lighting. “Largest single use of electricity” varies by year and between residential, commercial, and industrial. For 2016, air-conditioning and refrigeration held the title in both residential and commercial sectors, with lighting in third place (residential, after water heating) and fifth place (commercial). Data are from www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_use.
- 2.
Schaeffer and Real Goods, Book of Light; the original source of this information appears to be Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute.
- 3.
Ucilia Wang, “How LEDs Are Going to Change the Way We Look at Cities,” Forbes, 29 Sep 2014. Interesting paired photos before and after LEDs were installed in Los Angeles are in the online article, at www.forbes.com/sites/uciliawang/2014/09/10/bright-lights-big-profits/#46d3c9be50ba.
- 4.
If you really care, one candela is the light production of a standard whale-wax candle, 7/8 of an inch in diameter and weighing 1/6 of a pound; this determines the candle’s density and how fast and bright it burns. Once whale-wax fell out of favor, candelas were redefined in terms of the electromagnetic spectrum (monochromatic radiation at 540 terahertz with an intensity of 1/683 watt per steradian)—but all that was a mathematical way of describing the output of the same old candle. Aren’t you glad you asked?
- 5.
The one unit square, one unit from the source point, also defines the steradian, or “solid an-gle,” used for measuring directional intensity. The steradian is a cone or pyramid with its tip at the source point; its base is the one-by-one surface. The point is considered to be the center of a sphere with a one-unit radius, and the steradian is a wedge taken out of that sphere.
- 6.
J. F. Simard, Lumec Chronicles, Spring 2001, 1 (editor’s comments in manufacturer’s newsletter).
- 7.
P. Cinzano et al., The First World Atlas of the Artificial Night Sky Brightness, 13 Aug 2001, Royal As-tronomical Society, available in high resolution from www.lightpollution.it/dmsp/.
- 8.
Deborah Schoch, “Fading Glory,” Los Angeles Times, 20 Oct 2003, D-1.
- 9.
For information on NPS initiatives to protect night skies in the parks, visit www.nps.gov/subjects/nightskies/wilderness.htm.
- 10.
R. G. Stevens and M. S. Rea, “Light in the Built Environment: Potential Role of Circadian Disruption in Endocrine Disruption and Breast Cancer,” Cancer Causes and Control 12, no. 3 (Apr 2001): 279–87, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.
- 11.
Several articles by Itai Kloog and colleagues have appeared in the journal Chronobiology International; see, for example, “Light at Night Co-distributes with Incident Breast But Not Lung Cancer in the Female Population of Israel,” vol. 25, no. 1 (2008): 65–81, and “Does the Modern Urbanized Sleeping Habitat Post a Breast Cancer Risk?,” vol. 28, no. 1 (2011): 76–80. Much of the content of this journal relates to light and lighting as they affect the biological clock. See also note 18 below.
- 12.
S. Davis and D. K. Mirick, “Circadian Disruption, Shift Work and the Risk of Cancer: A Summary of the Evidence and Studies in Seattle,” Cancer Causes and Control 17, no. 4 (May 2006): 539–45.
- 13.
Richard A. Stone, “Infant Myopia and Night Lighting,” Nature, 13 May 1999.
- 14.
See www.cureresearch.com/i/insomnia/stats.htm; 2003 figures.
- 15.
Stevens and Rea, “Light in the Built Environment.” Software to adjust color temperature of computer and phone screens to mimic circadian cycles is available from f.lux at https://justgetflux.com/ and is beginning to be built into smartphones.
- 16.
International Dark-Sky Association, “Visibility, Environmental, and Astronomical Issues Associated with Blue-Rich White Outdoor Lighting,” 4 May 2010. A five-page executive summary is titled “Seeing Blue.” Both are available for download at www.darksky.org.
- 17.
American Medical Association, Council on Science and Public Health, “Human and Environmental Effects of Light Emitting Diode (LED) Community Lighting,” CSAPH Report 2-A-16. Link at www.darksky.org.
- 18.
Harald Stark et al., “Nighttime Photochemistry: Nitrate Radical Destruction by Anthropogenic Light Sources,” paper presented at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, Dec 2010, www.researchgate.net/publication/252609588_Nighttime_photochemistry_nitrate_radical_destruction_by_anthropogenic_light_sources.
- 19.
Nina Bassuk, personal communication.
- 20.
I. Kloog, B. Portnov, and A. Haim, “Light Pollution as a Risk Factor for Breast Cancer: A GIS-Assisted Case Study,” 21 Jun 2005, conference paper, available at http://slideplayer.com/slide/8955928/.
- 21.
For the Exeter research, see Jonathan Bennie et al., “Ecological Effects of Artificial Light at Night on Wild Plants,” Journal of Ecology 104, no. 3 (2016): 611–20. For species vulnerability to light and other detail data, see William Chaney, “Does Night Lighting Harm Trees?,” 2002, www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/fnr/fnr-faq-17.pdf, online only, from Purdue University, Department of Forestry and Natural Resources.
- 22.
Catherine Rich and Travis Longcore, eds., Ecological Consequences of Artificial Night Lighting (Washington DC: Island Press, 2006).
- 23.
WTC photo at www.flap.org/.
- 24.
Erin Weaver, “Building Owners Responsible for Bird Deaths, Judge Rules,” EBN, Apr 2013, 40. The ruling was based on including light as a pollutant. In the United States, we can’t even get agreement that CO2 is a pollutant!
- 25.
Study reported in Ben Harder, “Light All Night: New Images Quantify a Nocturnal Pollutant,” Science News 169, no. 11 (18 Mar 2006): 170.
- 26.
Gábor Horváth et al., “Polarized Light Pollution: A New Kind of Ecological Photopol-lution,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 7, no. 6 (Aug 2009): 317–25.
- 27.
Karen Peterson, “Night-Sky Law Needs to Be Tougher, Researchers Say,” Santa Fe New Mexican, 8 Apr 1999, B-4. Exemptions, from prisons to ordinary billboards, are commonly pushed through by lobbyists.
- 28.
J. F. Simard, Lumec Chronicles (manufacturer’s newsletter), Spring 2001, 9. Lumec’s report did not claim that semi-cutoff designs were always better at reducing reflection.
- 29.
Based on the fact that new lamps save up to 90 percent; see the multi-LED bulb description in this chapter.
- 30.
Charles W. Harris and Nicholas T. Dines, Timesaver Standards for Landscape Architecture (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988), 54011–13.
- 31.
All D. Crawford information is from his videotaped lecture at University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, n.d., Santa Fe Public Library collection.
- 32.
- 33.
Alex Wilson, “Disposal of Fluorescent Lamps and Ballasts,” EBN, Oct 1997, 1, 9–14.
- 34.
Janet Lennox Moyer, The Landscape Lighting Book (New York: Wiley, 1992). This has a truly remarkable amount of detail on materials, operation, and design.
- 35.
Figures are for 2017; footing, wiring, and electrical cost based on typical US pricing. Information is from a solar manufacturer with intent to persuade, but appears credible: www.engoplanet.com/single-post/2016/03/19/Solar-Street-Light-price-Why-cost-of-installing-solar-street-light-makes-sense.
- 36.
The manufacturing branch, formerly SolarCap Infinity, was purchased by SolaRight in 2015. See www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150721005233/en/SolaRight-Lighting-LLC-Acquires-SolarCap-Infinity.
- 37.
- 38.
Harris and Dines, Timesaver.
- 39.
Part of discussion in Brent Ehrlich, “The Death and Rebirth of DC Power,” EBN, Aug 2016, 8.
- 40.
Tristan Roberts, “Full Line of Residential LED Lighting Arrives” (Product Review), EBN, Jul 2006.
- 41.
Seong-Rin Lim et al., “ Potential Environmental Impacts from the Metals in Incandescent, Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL), and Light-Emitting Diode (LED) Bulbs,” Environmental Science and Technology 47, no. 2 (2013): 1040–47; online at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es302886m. See also Emily Catacchio, “LEDs Exceed California’s Hazardous Waste Standards,” EBN, Feb 2011, 5. The same test produced almost no violation of federal standards, which consider fewer metals.
- 42.
This is a good example of the difference between efficacy and efficiency, as used in lighting. The efficacy of the LEDs (how much light they put out per watt of energy) remains the same, but the efficiency of the whole fixture (how much light comes out where it is useful) is increased by the reversed-reflector design. This design is also used in high-performance flashlights for emergency rescue personnel (Pelican Products, Torrance CA).
- 43.
Described in an article posted at www.archlighting.com/. See also the lighting chapter in the New York City Department of Transportation’s Street Design Manual, 2nd ed., www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/streetdesignmanual.shtml.
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© 2018 Kim Sorvig and J. William Thompson
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Sorvig, K., Thompson, J.W. (2018). Celebrate Light, Respect Darkness. In: Sustainable Landscape Construction. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-811-4_9
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