Light and alternating day/night cycles are essential elements in the development of plant and animal species. Therefore, artificial night lighting in rural and urbanized areas can harm animal species that may be disoriented or avoid this light.

In that respect, more and more studies suggest that light pollution contributes to the loss of biodiversity, especially because it leads to a fragmentation of the habitats of species that seek to avoid this light. The creation of "Black Corridors", which would be added to the Green and Blue Corridors*, is at the heart of the land-use planning issues.

To achieve these frames and limit the impact of night lighting, a fine mapping of light pollution is essential. We therefore propose to establish a methodology to improve the characterization and mapping representation of light pollution sources.

First, we would like to use Open Street Map (OSM) to view all the streetlights in a given city or place. Then, we would like to characterize the activity of these lampposts according to three axes: the temporal axis (schedules, durations), the spatial axis (density, position) and finally the physical-chemical characteristics (type of lighting, spectrum, flow, etc.).

Right now, we are in adding data to OSM. We are, of course, open to any offer or help you may give us! If you're interested in this topic, come and talk with us on our Slack space: https://hack4nature.slack.com/archives/C01B6TAMP46.

*Green and Blue corridors refer to networks of terrestrial and aquatic ecological continuity identified by regional ecological coherence schemes and by planning documents of the french state, local authorities and their groups.