BALIN - Insect protection at the railway station by reducing light pollution

Light pollution as a major threat to insect diversity

Artificial light at night (ALAN) has a strong impact on many insects by attracting them and driving them away from their natural habitat. It is estimated that around one billion insects are affected every summer night in Germany, often dying from artificial light sources. The global increase in light pollution and the brightening of the night sky in recent decades therefore pose major threats to insect diversity and are of growing importance for national and international nature conservation.

In the rail transport sector, too, large areas are regularly illuminated at night for operational and traffic safety reasons. In Germany, Deutsche Bahn Station & Service (DB S&S) operates 5,400 illuminated railway stations and a total of 1,900 km of illuminated tracks. For safety reasons, DB S&S's lighting concept is subject to strict requirements, but potential effects on insect diversity have hardly been taken into account to date.

Project approach

The BALIN project is intended to provide the scientific basis for integrating insect protection into the DB S&S lighting concept by analysing the suction effect of night-time platform lighting on flying insects. To this end, the suction effect of three alternative light sources with different light colours and spectral distributions will be compared at six stations in the Westhavelland Nature Park, which was declared Germany's first light conservation area in 2014.

Flying insects at the alternative light sources are monitored using semi-automatic air filter traps and analysed using modern non-destructive metabarcoding, supplemented by classic morphological species identification, biomass measurements and counting data.