Biography

Agustin Perez-Barahona is a tenured researcher of INRA-AgroParisTech (France), and a research fellow of the Department of Economics of Ecole Polytechnique (France). He holds a PhD and MA in Economics from the Catholique University of Louvain and CORE (Belgium). His fields of interest are Macroeconomics, Economic Dynamics and Growth, Energy and Environmental Economics.

Article Title

The Impact of Light Pollution on the Sea Turtle Population in the Caribbean

Abstract

Marine biodiversity is and continues to be a growing point of attraction for the Caribbean tourism sector. At the same time it is also well known that coastal pollution can severely affect marine biodiversity and is thus of considerable concern. One largely neglected aspect in this regard has been what role increased coastal lighting due to the development of tourism facilities and housing on or near the coast may play. More specifically, while a number of studies in the natural sciences have already pointed out that some marine species are particularly sensitive to light pollution

• The impact of the rising degree of light pollution in the Caribbean has gone largely unexplored.
• In this paper, we set out to study how light pollution in the Caribbean coastal areas may have affected one particular aspect of biodiversity in the region, namely the sea turtle population. Arguably, light pollution may be particularly important for marine turtles, where their beach nesting and mortality rates of the newborns are negatively affected by coastal lights.
• Our approach to quantitatively estimate the impact of light pollution on turtle populations is to combine a number of unique data sets.

Firstly, we identify those beaches that are important for turtle breeding within the Caribbean. We then use satellite derived nightlight imagery at the 1km grid levels as derived from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS) to estimate the extent of night time pollution over time across these locations. Finally, we collect from a variety of data sources (surveys, turtle tagging, etc.) to proxy the local extent of turtle breeding/population. Combining these data sets will then allow us to econometrically identify the impact of night pollution on the turtle population within the Caribbean.