[A-HW24] Material transportation and cycling at the land-sea interface: from headwaters to the ocean

[AHW24-P17] Impacts on forest soil microbial ecosystems due to reduced declining activity in response to the spread of COVID-19

*Sakae Horisawa¹, Yuko Itoh², Toru Okamoto², Keiji Takase³, Masahiro Kobayashi² (1.Kochi University of Technology, 2.Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Japan, 3.Ishikawa Prefectural University)

Keywords:Rainfall monitoring, Airborne microbes, Forest environment

The main route of the substance into forests is deposition from the atmosphere by rainfall, aerosols, and gases. Airborne microorganisms are also thought to move with aerosols and enter the forest through rainwater. Changes in the aerial environment associated with the global decline in economic activity due to urban lockdowns and behavioral restraint regulations to prevent the spread of COVID-19 were swift, but it will be interesting to see how it affects the material cycles within the typical forest ecosystem. It is essential to continuously follow and evaluate the impact of declining economic activities by using the monitoring data so far. In this study, we estimated the effects of microbial community structure in rainwater and groundwater on decomposition activities in the soil at two sites across a mountain range in the Japanese mountains, one of which is heavily influenced by transboundary air pollutant inflow from China (Ishikawa) and the other by inflow from the Tokyo metropolitan area (Ibaraki).