Societal Impact of COVID-19 Crisis on the Ambient Seismic Noise in Metropolitan France
Résumé
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 analyzed changes in human activity based on the study of the ambient seismic noise level in metropolitan France. We propose a different approach to previous studies, investigating variations in seismic noise levels between the pandemic years 2020 and 2021, as well as the post-COVID-19 period (2022-2023), using 2019 as the prepandemic reference year. 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 the reductions in seismic noise levels. The magnitude of the noise level reduction is greater for the first lockdown than for the last. We also observe a signature of curfew periods and analyze variations according to time of day and day of the week. Changes in road traffic during lockdowns and curfews are shown to be a major factor contributing to observed variations in ambient seismic noise.
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