Societal Impact of COVID-19 Crisis on the Ambient Seismic Noise in Metropolitan France
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26443/seismica.v4i2.1491Keywords:
Ambient seismic noiseAbstract
The COVID-19 pandemic led to restrictions on human mobility worldwide. In France, numerous phases of lockdowns and curfews were instituted in an attempt to limit the consequences of this pandemic. Through these various phases of restrictions, we analysed changes in human activity based on the study of ambient seismic noise level in metropolitan France. We propose a different approach to previous studies, studying variations in the seismic noise level between the pandemic years 2020 and 2021 with respect to 2019, before the pandemic, taken as a reference. We focused our work between 4 and 8 Hz, where human induced noise sources are significant. We took advantage of the wide instrumental coverage of metropolitan France to distinguish the effects of restrictions in urbanized and rural areas. Whether in urban or rural areas, the effects of lockdowns and curfews coincide with reductions in seismic noise levels. The magnitude of the noise level reduction is greater for the first than for the last lockdowns. We also observe a signature of curfew periods and analyse variations according to time of day and day of the week. Changes in road traffic during lockdowns and curfews are a major factor contributing to the observed variations in ambient seismic noise.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Flavien Mattern, Loretta Bardavid, Arnaud Delsuc, Vivien Belin, Jérôme Vergne, Dimitri Zigone, Jean Schmittbuhl
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