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

The lagoon of Venice has always been affected by the regional geomorphological evolution, anthropogenic stressors and global changes. Different morphological settings and variable biogeophysical conditions characterize this continuously evolving system that rapidly responds to the anthropic impacts....

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Autores principales: Braga, Federica, Scarpa, Gian Marco, Brando, Vittorio Ernesto, Manfè, Giorgia, Zaggia, Luca
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7242204/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32470688
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.139612
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author Braga, Federica
Scarpa, Gian Marco
Brando, Vittorio Ernesto
Manfè, Giorgia
Zaggia, Luca
author_facet Braga, Federica
Scarpa, Gian Marco
Brando, Vittorio Ernesto
Manfè, Giorgia
Zaggia, Luca
author_sort Braga, Federica
collection PubMed
description The lagoon of Venice has always been affected by the regional geomorphological evolution, anthropogenic stressors and global changes. Different morphological settings and variable biogeophysical conditions characterize this continuously evolving system that rapidly responds to the anthropic impacts. When the lockdown measures were enforced in Italy to control the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 infection on March 10th 2020, the ordinary urban water traffic around Venice, one of the major pressures in the lagoon, came to a halt. This provided a unique opportunity to analyse the environmental effects of restrictions to mobility on water transparency. Pseudo true-colour composites Sentinel-2 satellite imagery proved useful for qualitative visual interpretation, showing the reduction of the vessel traffic and their wakes from the periods before and during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. A quantitative analysis of suspended matter patterns, based on satellite-derived turbidity, in the absence of traffic perturbations, allowed to focus on natural processes and the residual stress from human activities that continued throughout the lockdown. We conclude that the high water transparency can be considered as a transient condition determined by a combination of natural seasonal factors and the effects of COVID-19 restrictions.
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spelling pubmed-72422042020-05-22 COVID-19 lockdown measures reveal human impact on water transparency in the Venice Lagoon Braga, Federica Scarpa, Gian Marco Brando, Vittorio Ernesto Manfè, Giorgia Zaggia, Luca Sci Total Environ Article The lagoon of Venice has always been affected by the regional geomorphological evolution, anthropogenic stressors and global changes. Different morphological settings and variable biogeophysical conditions characterize this continuously evolving system that rapidly responds to the anthropic impacts. When the lockdown measures were enforced in Italy to control the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 infection on March 10th 2020, the ordinary urban water traffic around Venice, one of the major pressures in the lagoon, came to a halt. This provided a unique opportunity to analyse the environmental effects of restrictions to mobility on water transparency. Pseudo true-colour composites Sentinel-2 satellite imagery proved useful for qualitative visual interpretation, showing the reduction of the vessel traffic and their wakes from the periods before and during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. A quantitative analysis of suspended matter patterns, based on satellite-derived turbidity, in the absence of traffic perturbations, allowed to focus on natural processes and the residual stress from human activities that continued throughout the lockdown. We conclude that the high water transparency can be considered as a transient condition determined by a combination of natural seasonal factors and the effects of COVID-19 restrictions. The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. 2020-09-20 2020-05-22 /pmc/articles/PMC7242204/ /pubmed/32470688 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.139612 Text en © 2020 The Authors Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Braga, Federica
Scarpa, Gian Marco
Brando, Vittorio Ernesto
Manfè, Giorgia
Zaggia, Luca
COVID-19 lockdown measures reveal human impact on water transparency in the Venice Lagoon
title COVID-19 lockdown measures reveal human impact on water transparency in the Venice Lagoon
title_full COVID-19 lockdown measures reveal human impact on water transparency in the Venice Lagoon
title_fullStr COVID-19 lockdown measures reveal human impact on water transparency in the Venice Lagoon
title_full_unstemmed COVID-19 lockdown measures reveal human impact on water transparency in the Venice Lagoon
title_short COVID-19 lockdown measures reveal human impact on water transparency in the Venice Lagoon
title_sort covid-19 lockdown measures reveal human impact on water transparency in the venice lagoon
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7242204/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32470688
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.139612
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