On a map of the urbanized eastern U.S., the Blue Ridge Parkway is a sliver of tulip poplars, rhododendrons, deer, mountain streams, fresh air and another natural resource under pressure: dark skies.
Bedford County meeting
A community dark skies educational meeting will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Bedford Area Welcome Center, 816 Burks Hill Road.
The nonprofit Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, headquartered in Winston-Salem, is partnering with universities to conduct a comprehensive light pollution survey from the parkway’s northern gate at Rockfish Gap to its southern terminus near Cherokee, North Carolina.
“The effort will measure the brightness of the sky above the entire length of the Parkway and identify opportunities to reduce light pollution with the goal of preserving and improving Parkway’s night skies,” said Jeff Bary, professor of physics and astronomy at Colgate University in upstate New York.
Community meetings were held in Floyd on March 17 and Galax on March 19. Floyd and Grayson counties host parts of the parkway. Another will be held Tuesday in Bedford.
From March 14 to 20, students and faculty from Colgate, Wellesley College in Massachusetts, Radford University and the University of Virginia visited the parkway in Virginia, stopping at overlooks to measure the darkness of the night sky and visiting park facilities to record the brightness and colors emitted by light fixtures. Teams from the University of North Carolina-Asheville, Appalachian State and Western Carolina University conducted a similar survey along the parkway in North Carolina.
The community meetings focused on why dark skies matter for wildlife, human health and astronomy; practical steps homeowners and neighborhoods can take to reduce light pollution; and how communities can pursue certification as DarkSky International communities.
DarkSky International is a nonprofit headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, dedicated to fighting light pollution and preserving the night sky.
In Virginia, Staunton River State Park is certified by DarkSky International as a dark sky park. James River State Park and Natural Bridge State Park are certified international dark sky parks.
The parkway foundation is sponsoring the dark skies survey as part of its Blue Ridge Rising initiative, which seeks to unite and serve the 29 counties across two states that host the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Floyd County business owner John McEnhill is the county’s liaison to Blue Ridge Rising and a former president of the county’s chamber of commerce. McEnhill grew up in California in the 1960s.
“I could look up at the sky in my backyard and actually see the Milky Way in its full splendor,” he said. “It used to be a rural community, and it just got overdeveloped. … It’s a cautionary tale for what I don’t want to see happening in Floyd County.
“There are sections of the county where we really need to work on dark sky-friendly lighting. Schools for example have dusk to dawn lights and they cause a lot of light pollution. The goal is to preserve what we have and lessen the light pollution in the other areas. We’re forming a task force to provide education on dark sky friendly lighting practices, and we’re also going to probably work on encouraging local government officials to implement some type of lighting ordinance that would help Floyd County qualify for DarkSky certified community.”
The certified communities nearest to Virginia are in Indiana and Florida. Many more are in the west.
A widely cited 2019 study projected $5.8 billion in astrotourism spending on the Colorado Plateau alone over the following 10 years. A 2023 study found that 61.8% of Utah’s state and national park visitors participated in some type of night sky recreation.
“Astrotourism is big business,” McEnhill said.
Nicole Johnson is director of tourism for Bedford County, which is holding a dark skies public meeting on Tuesday. Topics will include requirements for dark sky certification.
“I’m not sure what all is involved, I will be learning from this meeting as well,” she wrote in an email. “If certification is attainable, I think we would be interested, yes.”
A benefit of dark skies that can’t be quantified in dollars is the experience of wonder.
“As people, I think we have few opportunities for experiencing awe,” Bary said. “And one of those opportunities is looking up at a really dark night sky and seeing the Milky Way. And awe experiences, the scientists are telling us now, [are] really good for our mental health and well-being.”
It’s not just humans who benefit from dark skies. Excessive lighting, especially on the blue end of the spectrum, is “not good for the environment, the ecosystem,” Bary said.
“Pollinators do not behave well if they’re exposed to too much blue light,” he said. “Migratory birds are drawn to lights and they can actually end up killing them as a result. Too much light at night is also not good for nocturnal species of all varieties.”
The parkway foundation, the primary fundraising partner of the parkway, is underwriting the survey with $10,000 for university travel and purchase of dark sky and lighting survey equipment, according to Jason Urroz, the foundation’s vice president of education.
“Once we understand the scope, we will begin conversations with the park about improving the lighting at facilities along the Parkway,” Urroz said. “And, yes, the Foundation is ready to help the park with funding to improve its dark skies.”
Dark-sky compliant lighting has a warmer color (more red, less blue), is directed down instead of up and avoids lighting unnecessary areas.
Attempts to contact the parkway for comment were not successful.
The survey is an outgrowth of a multidisciplinary project Bary is leading about people’s relationship to dark skies.
“I wanted to get people together to think about how they themselves were impacted by their experiences of the night sky, in Appalachia in particular,” Bary said.
People who grow up in a place with a dark sky — like McDowell County, West Virginia, where Bary is from — often take it for granted, until they move away, he said.
The dark sky/light pollution map that Bary intends to produce will chart the night sky above the entire parkway in terms of magnitude, or brightness, per unit of sky area. Data collection is simple and involves pointing a light meter overhead. The final map may take six months to a year to produce, but “within a month or two … we would have something that would look roughly complete,” Bary said.
It will be posted on the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation and Blue Ridge Rising websites.
