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The Impact of COVID Lockdowns on Reducing Air Pollution
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The Impact of COVID Lockdowns on Reducing Air Pollution

A special issue of Pollutants (ISSN 2673-4672). This special issue belongs to the section "Air Pollution".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 November 2022) | Viewed by 5566

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Farshad Amiraslani

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Geography & Environmental Sciences, Ulster University, Coleraine BT52 1SA, Northern Ireland, UK
Interests: monitoring of soil; air and marine ecosystems; including dust emissions; urban city air pollution; wetland pollution

Special Issue Information

Dear colleagues,

Despite all humanistic miseries and losses, the recent COVID-19 pandemic, 2020–2021, created an exceptional opportunity for the environment to be revived biologically in many places. Globally, reports reveal improved conditions for the wildlife and plants for their populations to be rebounded.

Urban areas where over half of the current population lives have experienced more calm situations and healthier air quality due to the lockdowns. This is not surprising because a lot of routine activities, as well as manufacturing, transportations, and trades, declined or were halted. In the meantime, however, indoor activities increased as people were confined in their homes, possibly receiving less fresh air and increasing their cooking activities.

Therefore, in this Special Issue, we are looking at indoor and outdoor air pollution during lockdowns. For outdoor pollution, we seek original works that provide trends across various urban or rural areas during the timeframe mentioned above and beyond (as a comparison). Likewise, we would like to receive original contributions for possible changes in indoor air quality at homes or workplaces.

Contributors may utilize a diverse range of methodologies and datasets. Therefore, you are encouraged to submit to this Special Issue regardless of research methods. Do not hesitate to contact us should you have any further inquiries about the scope of this Special Issue.

Dr. Farshad Amiraslani
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Pollutants is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • COVID-19
  • Air pollution
  • Urban pollution

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 7707 KiB  
Article
Trends of CO and NO2 Pollutants in Iran during COVID-19 Pandemic Using Timeseries Sentinel-5 Images in Google Earth Engine
by Siavash Shami, Babak Ranjgar, Jinhu Bian, Mahdi Khoshlahjeh Azar, Armin Moghimi, Meisam Amani and Amin Naboureh
Pollutants 2022, 2(2), 156-171; https://doi.org/10.3390/pollutants2020012 - 21 Apr 2022
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 4765
Abstract
The first case of COVID-19 in Iran was reported on 19 February 2020, 1 month before the Nowruz holidays coincided with the global pandemic, leading to quarantine and lockdown. Many studies have shown that environmental pollutants were drastically reduced with the spread of [...] Read more.
The first case of COVID-19 in Iran was reported on 19 February 2020, 1 month before the Nowruz holidays coincided with the global pandemic, leading to quarantine and lockdown. Many studies have shown that environmental pollutants were drastically reduced with the spread of this disease and the decline in industrial activities. Among these pollutants, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and carbon monoxide (CO) are widely caused by anthropogenic and industrial activities. In this study, the changes in these pollutants in Iran and its four metropolises (i.e., Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, and Tabriz) in three periods from 11 March to 8 April 2019, 2020, and 2021 were investigated. To this end, timeseries of the Sentinel-5P TROPOMI and in situ data within the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud-based platform were employed. It was observed that the results of the NO2 derived from Sentinel-5P were in agreement with the in situ data acquired from ground-based stations (average correlation coefficient = 0.7). Moreover, the results showed that the concentration of NO2 and CO pollutants in 2020 (the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic) was 5% lower than in 2019, indicating the observance of quarantine rules, as well as people’s initial fear of the coronavirus. Contrarily, these pollutants in 2021 (the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic) were higher than those in 2020 by 5%, which could have been due to high vehicle traffic and a lack of serious policy- and law-making by the government to ban urban and interurban traffic. These findings are essential criteria that might be used to guide future manufacturing logistics, traffic planning and management, and environmental sustainability policies and plans. Furthermore, using the COVID-19 scenario and free satellite-derived data, it is now possible to investigate how harmful gas emissions influence air quality. These findings may also be helpful in making future strategic decisions on how to cope with the virus spread and lessen its negative social and economic consequences. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Impact of COVID Lockdowns on Reducing Air Pollution)
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