Almost seems like poetic justice that it takes a zoonotic virus to ultimately benefit the animal world! imo.
Snippets from lengthy article.. rbbm.
The Pandemic Is Turning the Natural World Upside Down
''In a bittersweet twist, the surreal slowdown of life as we know it has presented researchers with a rare opportunity to study the modern world under some truly bizarre conditions, and they’re scrambling to collect as much data as they can. Here are four ways the pandemic is being felt across land, air, and sea.''
''There’s less rumbling on the surface
Seismologists around the world have noticed the same effect Koelemeijer detected in London, and at more traditional stations than a fireplace.
The trend started with Thomas Lecocq, a seismologist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, in Brussels. Seismic stations are usually found well outside metropolitan areas, away from vibrations that could obscure subtle tremors within Earth’s interior, but the Brussels station was established more than a century ago, before a city grew around it. Today, it provides a fascinating glimpse of the ebb and flow of a bustling city; Lecocq has found that when it snows, anthropogenic seismic activity decreases, and on the day of a road race, it spikes. Lecocq checked seismic data the day before Belgium
began a nationwide lockdown, and then the following morning. The drop in activity, he said, was “immediate.” Right now, daytime in Brussels resembles Christmas Day.
Lecocq
shared his approach online, and seismologists in the United States, France, New Zealand, and elsewhere are now seeing the effects of their country’s own social-distancing measures on seismic activity.
For seismologists who study seismic signals from Earth’s interior—rather than other sources, including people, animals, even storms—quarantines seem to have made it easier to listen. “Normally we wouldn’t pick up a 5.5 [magnitude earthquake] from the other side of the world, because it would be too noisy, but with less noise, our instrument is now able to pick up 5.5’s with much nicer signals during the day,” Koelemeijer said.''
''There’s Less Air Pollution
As cities and, in some cases, entire nations weather the pandemic under lockdown,
Earth-observing satellites have detected a significant decrease in the concentration of a common air pollutant, nitrogen dioxide, which enters the atmosphere through emissions from cars, trucks, buses, and power plants. The drop, observed in
China and
Europe, coincided with stringent social-distancing measures on the ground.''
''City dwellers might now be hearing sounds that can get muffled by the usual drone. Rebecca Franks, an American who lives in Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China, made this observation 48 days into the city’s quarantine last month:
“I used to think there weren’t really birds in Wuhan, because you rarely saw them and never heard them. I now know they were just muted and crowded out by the traffic and people,” Franks wrote on Facebook. “All day long now I hear birds singing. It stops me in my tracks to hear the sound of their wings.”
''Fournet is thinking now of North Pacific humpback whales, who have begun to move northward this month and will soon be swimming with newborn calves in southeast Alaska, a region also popular with cruise ships for views of local wildlife.
“This will be the quietest entry that humpback whales have had in southeastern Alaska in decades,” Fournet said. “Nature is taking a breath when the rest of us are holding ours.”
