The ecology of COVID-19 and related environmental and sustainability issues

Around the globe, human behavior and ecosystem health have been extensively and sometimes severely affected by the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. Most efforts to study these complex and heterogenous effects to date have focused on public health and economics. Some studies have evaluated the pandemic's influences on the environment, but often on a single aspect such as air or water pollution. The related research opportunities are relatively rare, and the approaches are unique in multiple aspects and mostly retrospective. Here, we focus on the diverse research opportunities in disease ecology and ecosystem sustainability related to the (intermittent) lockdowns that drastically reduced human activities. We discuss several key knowledge gaps and questions to address amid the ongoing pandemic. In principle, the common knowledge accumulated from invasion biology could also be effectively applied to COVID-19, and the findings could offer much-needed information for future pandemic prevention and management.

Automated summary

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has had extensive and severe impacts on human behavior and ecosystem health globally, with most studies focusing on public health and economics; there is relatively less research on the pandemic's impacts on the environment, often limited to specific aspects like air or water pollution; studying the effects of lockdowns that reduced human activities during the pandemic can offer valuable research opportunities in disease ecology and ecosystem sustainability.