
Sharolyn Anderson
National Parks Services - Physical Scientist
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Dr. Sharolyn Anderson is a physical scientist with the National Park Service, Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division (NSNSD). Her current responsibilities are mainly focus on collaborating with partners to research the effects of noise and light on wildlife and visitor experience and assisting parks throughout the country with management of sound and lighting resources. These projects include spatial modeling of soundscapes and light pollution, aircraft monitor over NPS units, and using experimental design understanding the impacts of lighting on park resources and visitors experience. Sharolyn works with parks and partners to use scenarios to better understand the impacts of different decisions in regard to sound and lighting which affect the natural capital of the parks. This includes using ecosystems services to value the natural capital.
Before joining NSNSD in January 2017, she was faculty at Texas State University, University of Denver, and University of South Australia. Her research areas include light pollution, ecosystem services valuation, green infrastructure, spatial analysis, and modeling. Examples of her work related to the protection of night skies is using satellite night skies data (DMSP or VIIRS) as a proxy with other datasets to map impervious surfaces, human well-being, economic distributions, ecological footprints, characterizing landscape relationships, proxy measures of emergy, and monitoring the effectiveness of environmental policies. She has also been a member of national and international data working groups, e.g. GEO Human Planet Initiative (Global Human Settlement Layer), Adelaide International Bird Sanctuary, and Economics of Land Degradation. Sharolyn Anderson has a PhD in Geography with a specialization in Geographic Information Science. She has her BS in Computer Science and MA in Geography from the University of New Mexico.
She is a DarkSky Advocate in her spare time.
The Ecological Economics of Light Pollution: Impacts on Ecosystem Service Value
Light pollution has significant detrimental effects on wildlife, human health, and ecosystem functions. This presentation delves into the economic implications of light pollution by examining its impact on the value of global ecosystem services. Using the Simplified All-Sky Light Pollution Ratio (sALR) as a measure of light pollution’s negative impact, and the Copernicus PROBA-V Global Landcover Database to estimate ecosystem service value, we assess how light pollution degrades ecosystem functions.
Our findings reveal that in areas with maximum light pollution, ecosystem service values are reduced by 40%, resulting in an annual global loss of USD 3.4 trillion—approximately 3% of the total global value of ecosystem services and 3% of the global GDP. This talk will also present the distribution of these losses across countries and landcover types, highlighting the urgent need for light pollution mitigation.

Sharolyn Anderson
National Parks Services - Physical Scientist
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