Lighting Tracks Transition in Eastern Europe

Abstract

Previous studies have revealed that satellite-observed lighting data from most countries are relatively well correlated with both population and gross domestic product (GDP). Eastern Europe contains the largest concentration of countries with lighting patterns that do not adhere to this trend by exhibiting higher correlations with either GDP or population. We examined a time series of DMSP nighttime light data spanning two decades and found that GDP-centric countries experienced an increase in nighttime light in the two decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Conversely, population-centric countries experienced widespread lighting losses during the first decade and urban lighting growth during the second decade. The fact that lighting was lost without the loss of infrastructure indicates that lighting is a poor proxy for mapping the extent of constructed infrastructure in some cases. These results indicate that the use of nighttime lights as an anthropogenic land cover proxy may require national or even subnational calibration in Eastern Europe.