The COVID-19 pandemic: Impacts on cities and major lessons for urban planning, design, and management

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on socio-economic, energy-environment and transport sector globally and sustainable development goal (SDG)

Environment and COVID-19: Pollutants, impacts, dissemination, management and recommendations for facing future epidemic threats.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in unparalleled global impacts on human mobility. In the ocean, ship-based activities are thought to have been impacted due to severe restrictions on human movements and changes in consumption. Here, we quantify and map global change in marine traffic during the first half of 2020. There were decreases in 70.2% of Exclusive Economic Zones but changes varied spatially and temporally in alignment with confinement measures. Global declines peaked in April, with a reduction in traffic occupancy of 1.4% and decreases found across 54.8% of the sampling units. Passenger vessels presented more marked and longer lasting decreases. A regional assessment in the Western Mediterranean Sea gave further insights regarding the pace of recovery and long-term changes. Our approach provides guidance for large-scale monitoring of the progress and potential effects of COVID-19 on vessel traffic that may subsequently influence the blue economy and ocean health.

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Tracking the global reduction of marine traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic.

India had announced the longest ever lockdown from 25 March 2020 to 14 April 2020 amid COVID-19 pandemic It was reported that the water quality of the Ganga River has improved as compared to regul

Changes in turbidity along Ganga river using Sentinel-2 satellite data during lockdown associated with COVID-19

COVID-19 lockdown measures reveal human impact on water transparency in the Venice Lagoon.

The coexistence of phytoplankton and macrophytes in the Lagoon of Venice (Northern Adriatic Sea, Italy) was investigated using in situ data collected monthly as part of International Long Term Ecosystem Research (LTER), together with satellite imagery for the period 1998–2017. The concentrations of chlorophyll a and hydrochemical parameters were measured in three areas of the lagoon, where the expansion of well-developed stands of submerged vegetation was observed by remote sensing. Our results suggest interaction between phytoplankton and macrophytes (macroalgae and seagrasses) in the last few years of the time series, evidenced by decreasing chlorophyll a concentrations in the vicinity of the macrophyte stands. The integration of LTER and remotely sensed data made it possible to evaluate the interaction of macrophytes and phytoplankton at the ecosystem scale for the first time in the Lagoon of Venice.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/12/10/2810/pdf

Phytoplankton–Macrophyte Interaction in the Lagoon of Venice (Northern Adriatic Sea, Italy)

In order to control the spread of the pandemic of Corona-Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), lockdowns of various durations and intensities have been established in many countries over the world all through the year 2020. The trilateral dashboard jointly implemented by NASA, JAXA and ESA aims at exploiting remote-sensing data to evaluate the impact of these restrictions, and subsequent recovery phases on many different environmental, agriculture and economic indicators. More specifically, this paper presents the indicators implemented to monitor the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on Water Quality, together with preliminary analysis results over a few Areas of Interest.

Trilateral Water Quality Monitoring from Space during Covid-19

COVID-19 lockdown measures brought to a drastic reduction of anthropic impacts on the environment, including the marine-coastal system. EO data have the potential to monitor and diagnose the subsequent effects of the lockdown in terms of water quality. The ESA-RACE project SOON aims to link complex patterns that may arise from the environmental changes due to COVID-19 lockdown by using EO data, also seeking to assess connectivity between inland and marine system. Within this frame, here we present a holistic, satellite-based analysis of the spatial-temporal variability of environmental parameters in the North Adriatic Sea (NAS; Mediterranean basin), exploiting the synergy of OC and SST products from different sensors, as well as in situ hydrologic data. Our analysis indicates a favorable interplay of environmental variability and reduction of anthropogenic activity that results in negative anomalies of Chlorophyll-a and Total Suspended Matter with respect to the climatologic values.

Gian Marco Scarpa

Papers

COVID-19 lockdown measures reveal human impact on water transparency in the Venice Lagoon.

Phytoplankton–Macrophyte Interaction in the Lagoon of Venice (Northern Adriatic Sea, Italy)

Trilateral Water Quality Monitoring from Space during Covid-19

Satellite Based Analyses on Potential Effects of the Covid19 Lockdown over Coastal Areas: The ESA-Race Soon Project