Abstract
We show that the definition of the city boundaries can have a dramatic
influence on the scaling behavior of the night-time light (NTL) as a
function of population (POP) in the US. Precisely, our results show that
the arbitrary geopolitical definition based on the
Metropolitan/Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA/CMSA)
leads to a sublinear power-law growth of NTL with POP. On the other
hand, when cities are defined according to a more natural agglomeration
criteria, namely, the City Clustering Algorithm (CCA), an isometric
relation emerges between NTL and population. This discrepancy is
compatible with results from previous works showing that the scaling
behaviors of various urban indicators with population can be
substantially different for distinct definitions of city boundaries.
Moreover, considering the CCA definition as more adequate than the
MSA/CMSA one because the former does not violate the expected
extensivity between land population and area of their generated
clusters, we conclude that, without loss of generality, the CCA measures
of light pollution and population could be interchangeably utilized in
future studies. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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