Artificial light at night is a top predictor of bird migration stopover density

Kyle G Horton; Jeffrey J Buler; Sharolyn J Anderson; Carolyn S Burt; Amy C Collins; Adriaan M Dokter; Fengyi Guo; Daniel Sheldon; Monika Anna Tomaszewska; Geoffrey M Henebry

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-43046-z

Artificial light at night is a top predictor of bird migration stopover density

Nat Commun. 2023 Dec 4;14(1):7446. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-43046-z.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA. kyle.horton@colostate.edu.
² Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA.
³ Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division, National Park Service, 1201 Oakridge Dr., Suite 100, Fort Collins, CO, 80525, USA.
⁴ Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.
⁵ Conservation Science Partners, Truckee, CA, USA.
⁶ Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
⁷ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
⁸ Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA.
⁹ Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.

Abstract

As billions of nocturnal avian migrants traverse North America, twice a year they must contend with landscape changes driven by natural and anthropogenic forces, including the rapid growth of the artificial glow of the night sky. While airspaces facilitate migrant passage, terrestrial landscapes serve as essential areas to restore energy reserves and often act as refugia-making it critical to holistically identify stopover locations and understand drivers of use. Here, we leverage over 10 million remote sensing observations to develop seasonal contiguous United States layers of bird migrant stopover density. In over 70% of our models, we identify skyglow as a highly influential and consistently positive predictor of bird migration stopover density across the United States. This finding points to the potential of an expanding threat to avian migrants: peri-urban illuminated areas may act as ecological traps at macroscales that increase the mortality of birds during migration.

MeSH terms

Animal Migration*
Animals
Birds
Light Pollution*
North America
Seasons
Telemetry
United States

Abstract

MeSH terms

Grants and funding