Oregon Parks and Recreation Camping & Dark Skies Report

Summary:

This analysis concludes that OPRD is better endowed with potential dark sky park locations than previously believed.

This is an update of a GIS project by IDA Oregon to identify those Oregon Parks and Recreation Department properties that could qualify as International Dark Sky Parks. Qualification as a Dark Sky Park is based in part on meeting a required level of night sky darkness. That darkness is achieved in areas that are relatively unaffected by light pollution. Another requirement is that people are allowed to be present at night, so we limit the analysis to properties that allow camping. This analysis uses skyglow models derived from night time images acquired by a NASA satellite sensor (VIIRS) to estimate how dark the night sky is at each location.