Too Much Light at Night Causes Spring to Come Early
New science suggests light pollution has more impacts than was previously known.
Future springs might arrive earlier than expected.
On Tuesday, scientists in the United Kingdom published a study charting the relationship between light pollution and the timing when trees produce buds. By observing four tree species, they found that on average, artificial light may cause trees to bud more than seven days earlier than their naturally occurring counterparts.
“It’s correlative, so we can’t prove anything. We can just show that there’s a correlation,” says Richard Ffrench-Constant, one of the study’s authors. The research was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Yet the study suggests that light pollution may be causing spring to come earlier. Or, at least, it’s tricking plants into thinking that spring is happening earlier.
Light pollution contributes to
