Publication date: Dec 23, 2024

We studied the characteristics of plankton community and its response to water environmental factors at the early stage of COVID-19 outbreak (2019-2020) in the Tianjin coastal waters of Bohai Bay. The water quality showed a good trend during this period, due to the reduction of pollution brought by the runoff rivers and water exchange driven by the circulation. In the survey area, 68 species of diatomata and dinoflagellata phytoplankton were found, where diatomata was the dominant population. The number of phytoplankton increased from 636,000 in 2019 to 1,642,600 in 2020. Compared with 2019, the impact factors of water environment in the surveyed area changed greatly, where nitrogen was the main impact factor in 2020. The adjustment of production and lifestyle in the early stage of COVID-19 outbreak suddenly slowed down the growth of the secondary industry, which contributed a lot to the improvement of water quality in 2020. ‘

Semantics

Original Article