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

[AHW24-P16] How COVID-19 pandemic affected air pollutants influx into forest ecosystems in Japan

*Yuko Itoh¹, Toru Okamoto¹, Keiji Takase², Sakae Horisawa³, Masahiro Kobayashi¹ (1.Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Japan, 2.Ishikawa Prefectural University, 3.Kochi University of Technology)

Keywords:COVID-19, Forest environment, Rainfall monitoring

Urban lockdowns and behavioral restraint regulations to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have been in place worldwide since early 2020. The widespread lockdown led to rapid improvements in air pollution in many countries. The impact of the COVID-19 outbreak has been longer than initially expected. It is important to clarify the impact of the global decline in economic activity on air quality on the local and global environment in order to provide data to reconstruct the relationship between sustainable future development of human activities and global environmental protection.
We have been monitoring elemental cycles at several forest watersheds to understand the effects of human activities in the Tokyo metropolitan area and transboundary air pollutants on forest ecosystems since 2008. In this study, we aimed to clarify the effects of reduction of human activities due to COVID-19 pandemic on the amount of air pollutants entering forest areas and forest ecosystems using long-term monitoring data obtained in Ibaraki, Ishikawa, and Nagano prefectures. Since the beginning of 2020, nitrogen (N) and sulfur (S) influxes in Japan's forested areas have not decreased significantly as reported in large cities of the world. In contrast, some trace elements, unlike N and S, have decreased considerably in their inflows.