야간조명으로 인한 생태계 영향 평가방안에 관한 연구

Abstract

Ecological Impact Assessment of Light Pollution Light pollution is well-known for its effect on health and night scenery, but the ecological effect of light pollution got little attention, so it is not much studied until now. Evolutionarily the ecosystem is adapted to night time, so the abrupt increase of light at night causes a serious ecological effect. Thus there is an urgent need to evaluate the current status of light pollution in Korea and research the ecological effect of light pollution systematically. This study reviews the previous researches of the ecological effect of artificial night light, especially on animals. Diurnal and nocturnal mammalia have different visual cell composition, so the increase of night light degrades the habitat suitability of nocturnal mammalia. For example, a certain bat species in mountainous village is replace by another bat species after the street light is installed. Migrating birds lost their migrating route or collide structures to dead by night light. Under natural condition, sea turtle hatchlings go to the sea induced by a little brightness of the sea side. But street lights make the land side much brighter than the sea side, so turtle hatchlings go to the street light instead of the sea, which results in much higher mortality rate. The congregated insects around street lights is a familiar ecological phenomenon, but the ecological effect of light pollution on insect population is not well studied. As many researches demonstrated the ecological effect of night light, there is no dispute about the ecological effect of night light, but it is still unclear the ecological effect of night light at the population level. Many countries have introduced diverse measures to minimize the environmental effect of light pollution and Korea starts to make a law and regulation on light pollution. But the light pollution is still not reviewed in the environmental impact assessment(EIA) system of Korea, so it is urgent to introduce the review process of the light pollution in EIA and develop a methodology and model to evaluate the light pollution effect.