A spatiotemporal analysis of light pollution in the city of Boulder, Colorado (2012-2021)
This brief analysis explores how light pollution has changed in the city of Boulder, Colorado over the past decade or so.
To explore this topic, I processed, visualized, and summarized 10 years of nighttime radiance data collected from NASA's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard the NASA/NOAA Joint Polar Satellite System (more specifically, NASA's VIIRS/NPP Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Yearly Composites product for 2012-2021). This is the same radiance data which powers the popular lightpollutionmap.info web application that allows users to visualize sources of light pollution across the globe.
The data provides annual composite estimates of radiance — the flux of radiation emitted per unit solid angle in a given direction by a unit area of a source — in a rasterized format at a spatial resolution of roughly
In my analysis, I seek answers to the following questions:
- How has radiance in Boulder, CO changed in the past decade?
- Where within the city is radiance the highest?
- Is it possible to compile some key recommendations for mitigation of nighttime radiance and light pollution within the city?
Find the geospatial data for this project below:
- NASA VIIRS data
- VIIRS documentation
- City of Boulder spatial extent Note that all TIFs are stored externally and haven't been uploaded to the repository for this project due to size. You can download these TIFs at the helper link above.