China's spring in 2020 is earlier, greener and brighter

In the past year, researcher Su Fenzhen’s team from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that during the 2020 new crown virus pneumonia epidemic, due to non-medical measures such as lockdowns and social restrictions adopted by China to block or slow the spread of the virus, 2020 The vegetation in the spring of the year is earlier, brighter and more lush than in previous years
.

Su Fenzhen introduced that the study used big data technology and 20 years of remote sensing image data to analyze the changes in various indicators before and after China's prevention and control measures in 2020, including the intensity of population activities, atmospheric emissions and substances, aerosol atmospheric transmittance, and photosynthetic efficiency.
Radiation, leaf area index and total primary productivity, etc.
, and then analyze the change trend of the vegetation indicators in the spring of the past 20 years, and compare them with the vegetation indicators in the spring of 2020
.

Attribution analysis shows that after the implementation of prevention and control measures, human activities have dropped significantly, and there is a causal relationship with the reduction of atmospheric particulate matter, the increase of atmospheric transmittance, the increase of solar effective radiation and the increase of vegetation growth
.

Su Fenzhen believes that although global change and its ecological response or mitigation is a long-term process, the slowdown of large-scale human activities on a regional or global scale is equivalent to reducing the pressure on human beings superimposed on nature, which can affect the earth.
The ecology has a significant positive impact
.

Information about the paper: https://doi.

Spring scenery in southern China (photo by Han Yangmei)