Artificial Light at Night surveys around Sydney Harbour
Description
This project was conducted for Megan Trethewy's Master of Research at Macquarie University, Sydney Australia. Meg conducted an investigation as the effects of Artificial Light At Night on intertidal grazing species at 12 different locations across Sydney: Balmain, Balmoral, Berry Island, Bradley's Head Reserve, Farm Cove, Kirribilli, Kurraba, Lavender Bay, Neilson Park, Rose Bay, Sawmiller's Reserve and Watsons Bay - all of which hosted either a seawall and or a rocky shore. This dataset includes information on daytime and nighttime lux levels, and intertidal species diversity (algae, sessile and mobile species) measured at low, mid and high tide and day and night.
Files
Steps to reproduce
Ecological surveys were conducted of the areas, which involved ten photographs at each of the tide levels (low, mid and high) along a 10m transect. Each of the pictures is listed in the raw data "ALAN_Dataset_2020.xlsx", and indicates the percent coverage and richness of sessile and algal species as well as the abundance and diversity of mobile species. The dataset also indicates which round the pictures were taken; One is April 2019, Two is August 2019, Three is March 2020, Four is June 2020. Pictures were taken during the day and at night time at the lowest tide. To measure the intensity and spread of ALAN, lux (which measures the intensity of immediate light sources) and sky glow (the reflection of light sources from particles in the sky). Lux measures were taken with a handheld light metre, while the sky glow was recorded with a Sky Quality Metre.