Quantifying the Variability of Ground Light Sources and Their Relationships with Spaceborne Observations of Night...

Area of Science:

• Remote Sensing
• Environmental Monitoring
• Lighting Technology

Background:

• The shift to LED lighting alters nightscapes, necessitating advanced monitoring tools.
• Panchromatic sensors have limitations in capturing these spectral changes.
• Multispectral night-time sensing is essential for accurate quantification.

Purpose of the Study:

• To quantify ground-based lighting source contributions.
• To correlate ground measurements with spaceborne night-time brightness and color.
• To assess the impact of LED lighting transition on nightscapes.

Main Methods:

• Ground-based measurements using the multidirectional, multispectral LANcube v2 over 458 km of roads in Israel and Australia.
• Spaceborne measurements utilizing the SDGSAT-1 multispectral Glimmer sensor.
• Analysis of apparent radiance and its correlation with directional ground-based measurements.

Main Results:

• Spaceborne apparent radiance was best explained by combining all ground-based directional measurements (R² = 0.725 for highways, R² = 0.556 for urban roads).
• Incoming light varied significantly across different road types and land uses.
• Night-time brightness and color variability were generally higher in urban areas compared to highways.

Conclusions:

• The transition to LED lighting is more readily detectable from space over highways than in dense urban areas due to spectral mixing.
• Multispectral sensing provides valuable data for monitoring global changes in nightscapes.
• Ground-based directional measurements enhance the accuracy of spaceborne night-time light assessments.