Light pollution is affecting the skies over more than half of our planet's key wildlife areas and is likely to increase, warns a new study. Light pollution artificially brightens the sky and has been linked to a variety of negative impacts in ecosystems affecting microbes, plants and many animals. Night-time light pollution has been shown to have wide-ranging effects on both individual species and entire ecosystems because it plays with their natural cycles. (A) shows the proportion of Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) which have 0 and 100% coverage of pristine night‐time skies and skies not polluted to the zenith. Just under half of KBAs in the Middle East (46 per cent) were entirely under skies polluted to the zenith.

Source: Daily Mail February 11, 2019 10:28 UTC