About — cost-lonne.eu and the LoNNe Research Heritage

cost·lonne takes its name from two things that shaped how Europe learned to study the dark. One is the EU COST programme — a funding framework that has connected researchers across borders since 1971. The other is LoNNe: Loss of the Night Network, a COST Action that ran from 2013 to 2017 and became the most systematic cross-disciplinary study of light pollution ever undertaken in Europe.

What COST is — and why it mattered for light pollution

The European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) programme does not fund research directly. Instead, it funds coordination networks — groups of scientists from different countries working on a shared problem. The model is deliberately low-overhead: researchers bring their own national funding, and COST covers meetings, short-term exchanges, and dissemination. The result is that a COST Action can unite dozens of institutions without requiring a single lead institution to manage everything.

For light pollution science, this structure was ideal. The problem is global in origin, continental in scale, and genuinely multidisciplinary — it requires ecologists, astronomers, physicists, urban planners, public health researchers, and lighting engineers to talk to each other. COST created the conditions for that conversation.

LoNNe: Loss of the Night Network (2013–2017)

COST Action ES1204, formally titled "Loss of the Night Network" and known as LoNNe, ran as an active network from October 2013 to October 2017. At its peak it included researchers from over 30 European countries plus observer participants from outside Europe.

LoNNe organised its work into five working groups:

WG1 — Measurement: Sky brightness instruments, calibration standards, satellite data validation
WG2 — Ecology: Effects on insects, birds, bats, marine organisms, plant phenology
WG3 — Human health: Circadian disruption, melatonin suppression, epidemiological correlates
WG4 — Mitigation: Lighting technology, spectral composition, directionality, policy levers
WG5 — Outreach: Public engagement, Globe at Night, communication to policymakers

The network produced dozens of peer-reviewed publications, participated in the Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness (Falchi et al., 2016), and contributed to the development of monitoring standards that are now used by national agencies across Europe.

What happened after LoNNe ended

COST Actions have a defined end date. When LoNNe formally closed in 2017, the science did not stop — but the coordinating structure dissolved. Researchers continued their work within national programs, EU Horizon projects, and informal collaborations. The IDA (International Dark-Sky Association) and national equivalents such as the German Dark Sky Network, Czech Dark Sky Society, and UK's Campaign for Dark Skies remained active.

In the years since, the body of evidence has continued to grow. Satellite monitoring has become more sophisticated. The transition from sodium to LED street lighting has added urgency to the spectral composition debate. And the collapse of insect populations — now linked in part to ALAN-related disruption — has moved light pollution out of specialist journals and into mainstream environmental discourse.

What cost·lonne is for

This portal exists to document that growing evidence base — accessibly, accurately, and without agenda. We are not affiliated with the EU COST programme or any current EU project. We are not a lobby organisation. We do not sell products or promote specific manufacturers.

What we do: cover the peer-reviewed science, explain the data, profile the places where dark skies are actively protected, and track the policy and technology developments that matter. The work of LoNNe and the broader COST-era light pollution research network is the backbone of what you'll find here.

Editorial approach

Articles on cost·lonne are written and edited by Lars Eriksson, a science editor based in Stockholm with a background in environmental journalism and ecology. All factual claims are sourced to peer-reviewed studies or official datasets. We link to primary sources. We do not use invented statistics.

If you spot an error, have a study you think we should cover, or want to discuss something: [email protected]