Coastal water quality improves during the COVID-19 pandemic: Maui, Hawai'i.

Coastal ecosystems are increasingly threatened by degraded water quality linked to agriculture, wastewater and changes in land-use. This study collected coastal water quality measurements to assess spatiotemporal trends and drivers of variability on the island of Maui, Hawai'i. We also utilized Hawai'i's COVID-19 visitor quarantine, which dropped visitor numbers on Maui by >99 %, to evaluate the effects of population on coastal water quality.

Surface Water CO variability in the Gulf of Mexico (1996-2017).

Approximately 380,000 underway measurements of sea surface salinity, temperature, and carbon dioxide (CO) in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) were compiled from the Surface Ocean CO Atlas (SOCAT) to provide a comprehensive observational analysis of spatiotemporal CO dynamics from 1996 to 2017. An empirical orthogonal function (EOF) was used to derive the main drivers of spatial and temporal variability in the dataset. In open and coastal waters, drivers were identified as a biological component linked to riverine water, and temperature seasonality.