The pandemic emptied the streets and turned our economy upside-down, but it did not cancel the environmental crisis. We asked researchers how the pandemic is affecting both the environment and the researcher’s daily lives.
While we are right now very much confined inside our houses, we are never truly isolated from our environment. The basic conditions of life require us to take care of the soil and biodiversity and to fight climate change. COVID-19 poses an immediate threat to human health, but its effects extend to the entire spectrum of life.
We wanted to know how environmental researchers see the crisis from the perspective of their own research topic and how it affects their work. We asked our grantees if they would be willing to share their expertise in the form of a blog post. In just a couple of days, we received messages from dozens of environmental scientists eager to write about their thoughts. This is how our new blog series Environmental research in the time of COVID-19 was born.
The range of topics suggested by the researchers was wide – everything from academic traveling to melting glaciers. The writings in the blog series show that concerns about the state of the environment will not disappear even in the midst of a pandemic. On the contrary, the corona crisis has highlighted new possibilities and perspectives for environmental research.
We will publish environmental researchers’ thoughts on the effects of the corona crisis weekly both in Finnish and in English. You can find blog posts on the Nessling Foundation website and social media channels.
In the blog series, environmental researchers answer the following questions, among others:
Has the crisis made us all nature-lovers?
Who collects soil samples or makes observations of mountain plants if the researcher is confined at home?
Can science react and produce solutions fast enough?
How does isolation affect our ways of consuming and interacting?
How has the pandemic affected Saimaa ringed seal research?
