COVID-19 lockdown effects on a coastal marine environment: Disentangling perception versus reality.

COVID-19 lockdown brought to a drastic reduction of anthropic impacts on the environment worldwide, including the marine-coastal system. Earth-Observation (EO) data have the potential to monitor and diagnose the effects of the lockdown in terms of water quality. Here we connect the dots among some coastal environmental changes that occurred during the Italian COVID-19 lockdown by using EO data, also seeking to assess connectivity between inland and marine systems.

Saharan dust deposition may affect phytoplankton growth in the Mediterranean sea at ecological time scales.

The surface waters of the Mediterranean Sea are extremely poor in the nutrients necessary for plankton growth. At the same time, the Mediterranean Sea borders with the largest and most active desert areas in the world and the atmosphere over the basin is subject to frequent injections of mineral dust particles. We describe statistical correlations between dust deposition over the Mediterranean Sea and surface chlorophyll concentrations at ecological time scales.