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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Solid Earth Geophysics
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feart.2024.1507241

Effect of the Covid-19 Lockdown on Background Noise Levels in Italian Strong Motion Network

Provisionally accepted
Deniz Ertuncay Deniz Ertuncay 1,2Simone Francesco Fornasari Simone Francesco Fornasari 2*Giovanni Costa Giovanni Costa 2
  • 1 National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics (Italy), Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy
  • 2 University of Trieste, Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Italy has been majorly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The government declared a full lockdown and limited human and commercial activities to keep the pandemic under control. The limited human activity reduced the spread of the virus and the cultural noise it created. The effect of the lockdown is detected by the Italian strong motion network, which covers the entire country with their stations mostly located in the settlements. To assess the effect of the lockdown, background noise information up to 1 s from 2022 is used as a comparison. It is found that the background noise levels dropped around 1.46 dB during the lockdown, with a nationwide reduction in almost all of the stations. Noise levels have dropped both in the daytime and nighttime during the lockdown, with a more significant noise drop during the nighttime, which can be linked to the ban on dining in restaurants and bars and the curfew. A similar trend is found in weekday and weekend comparisons; in both time ranges, 2022 was noisier regarding the lockdown period. Stations located in public spaces such as schools and city halls observed noise reduction of up to 7.99 dB, and this noise level reduction is visible in major cities. We analyzed the 10 most populated Italian cities and their surroundings and found noise reduction of up to 5.5 dB and 2.1 dB in the median.

    Keywords: Seismic noise, COVID-19 lockdown, anthropogenic seismic noise, seismic monitoring, Seismic network

    Received: 07 Oct 2024; Accepted: 13 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ertuncay, Francesco Fornasari and Costa. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Simone Francesco Fornasari, University of Trieste, Trieste, 34127, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy

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