No widespread signature of the COVID-19 quarantine period on water quality across a spectrum of coastal systems in the United States of America.

Autor: Wetz MS; Department of Life Sciences, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, TX 78412, USA; Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, TX 78412, USA. Electronic address: michael.wetz@tamucc.edu., Powers NC; Department of Life Sciences, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, TX 78412, USA., Turner JW; Department of Life Sciences, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, TX 78412, USA., Huang Y; School of Engineering and Computing Sciences, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, TX 78412, USA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: The Science of the total environment [Sci Total Environ] 2022 Feb 10; Vol. 807 (Pt 2), pp. 150825. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 Oct 08.
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150825
Abstrakt: During the recent COVID-19 related quarantine period, anecdotal evidence emerged pointing to a rapid, sharp improvement in water quality in some localities. Here we present results from an analysis of the impacts of the COVID-19 quarantine period using two long-term coastal water quality datasets. These datasets rely on sampling that operates at appropriate timescales to quantify the influence of reduced human activity on coastal water quality and span coastal ecosystems ranging from low human influence to highly urbanized systems. We tested two hypotheses: 1) reduced tourism during the COVID-19 quarantine period would lead to improved coastal water quality, and 2) water quality improvements would scale to the level of human influence, meaning that highly urbanized or tourist-centric watersheds would see greater improvement than more rural watersheds. A localized reduction in fecal indicator bacteria was observed in four highly impacted regions of the Texas (USA) coast, but this pattern was not widespread. In less impacted regions, the signature of natural, decadal environmental variability (e.g., dissolved oxygen and turbidity) overwhelmed any potential signature of reduced human activity. Results from this study add to the growing body of literature on the environmental impacts of the COVID-19 quarantine period, and when considered with existing literature, emphasize that coastal water quality improvements appear to be ephemeral and reserved for the most severely affected (by human activity) systems. Furthermore, results show the importance of assessing COVID-19 signatures against long-term, decadal datasets that adequately reveal a system's natural variation.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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