Data on night-time lighting in Brazil compiled at Gdańsk Tech incorporated into MapBiomas | Gdańsk University of Technology

MapBiomas is an international, multi-institutional initiative founded in Brazil that provides open spatial data based on satellite observations. It combines remote sensing, GIS and data processing to enable monitoring of changes in the environment and land use. The MapBiomas network is currently active in 14 countries, and its data are used in scientific research, environmental monitoring, planning and the activities of public institutions. 

A new layer dedicated to artificial night-time lighting has been added to the Urban MapBiomas Brazil collection. It comprises annual data on night-time radiance for the whole of Brazil from 2013 to 2025, compiled by Paweł Tysiąc, PhD, Eng. This enables the observation of urbanisation processes not only through changes in land cover, but also through the development and intensification of night-time lighting associated with human activity – in both urban and rural areas, as well as in the vicinity of natural areas. 

The method developed uses a quality-weighted log-normal model. Daily observations from NASA’s Black Marble VIIRS undergo quality control and are then used to estimate the annual expected radiance, accounting for its variability. The product also includes information on, among other things, dispersion, the effective number of observations, temporal coverage and estimation uncertainty. 

Work on this solution was conducted in collaboration with the MapBiomas team and the Universidade Estadual de Minas Gerais. The people involved in the development, evaluation and implementation of the solution included Vinicius Goulart, PhD, and Prof. Camila Teixeira. 

The incorporation of the data into MapBiomas means that the developed method and code have been turned into an operational geoinformation product available through the international Earth observation infrastructure. However, the platform's significance goes beyond scientific applications. According to MapBiomas, the project’s data have contributed, among other things, to the imposition of over USD 130 million in fines for deforestation in Brazil and the blocking of over USD 1 billion in funding.