Earth’s most ancient impact craters are disappearing

Earth’s earliest history still holds mysteries for geologists, and ancient craters could provide some answers — scientists are racing against time to find them

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION

 

IMAGE: IMPACT CRATERS AND THEIR BROADER STRUCTURES CAN BE VISIBLE IN A GEOLOGIC MAP, LIKE A BULLSEYE. BUT WHAT GEOPHYSICAL TRACES REMAIN AT THE STRUCTURE’S OUTERMOST EDGES? view more 

CREDIT: HUBER ET AL. (2023), JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH: PLANETS

This press release is available online at: https://news.agu.org/press-release/earths-most-ancient-impact-craters-are-disappearing/

AGU press contact:
Rebecca Dzombak, news@agu.org (UTC-4 hours)

Contact information for the researchers:
Matthew S. Huber, University of the Western Cape, mhuber@uwc.ac.za (UTC+2 hours)

WASHINGTON — Earth’s oldest craters could give scientists critical information about the structure of the early Earth and the composition of bodies in the solar system as well as help to interpret crater records on other planets. But geologists can’t find them, and they might never be able to, according to a new study. The study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Planets, AGU’s journal for research on the formation and evolution of the planets, moons and objects of our Solar System and beyond.

Geologists have found evidence of impacts, such as ejecta (material flung far away from the impact), melted rocks, and high-pressure minerals from more than 3.5 billion years ago. But the actual craters from so long ago have remained elusive. The planet’s oldest known impact structures, which is what scientists call these massive craters, are only about 2 billion years old. We’re missing two and a half billion years of mega-craters.

The steady tick of time and the relentless process of erosion are responsible for the gap, according to Matthew S. Huber, a planetary scientist at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa who studies impact structures and led the new study.

“It’s almost a fluke that the old structures we do have are preserved at all,” Huber said. “There are a lot of questions we’d be able to answer if we had those older craters. But that’s the normal story in geology. We have to make a story out of what’s available.”

Geologists can sometimes spot hidden, buried craters using geophysical tools, such as seismic imaging or gravity mapping. Once they’ve identified potential impact structures, they can search for physical remnants of the impact process to confirm its existence, such as ejecta and impact minerals.

The big question for Huber and his team was how much of a crater can be swept away by erosion before the last lingering geophysical traces disappear. Geophysicists have suggested that 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) of vertical erosion would erase even the biggest impact structures, but that threshold had never been tested in the field.

To find out, the researchers dug into one of the planet’s oldest known impact structures: the Vredefort crater in South Africa. The structure is about 300 kilometers (186 miles) across and was formed about 2 billion years ago when an impactor about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) across slammed into the planet.

The impactor hit with such energy that the crust and mantle rose up where the impact occurred, leaving a long-term dome. Farther from the center, ridges of rock jutted up, minerals transformed and rock melted. And then time took its course, eroding about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) down from the surface in two billion years.

Today, all that remains at the surface is a semicircle of low hills southwest of Johannesburg, which marks the center of the structure, and some smaller, telltale signs of impact. The bullseye, caused by the uplift of the mantle, appears in gravity maps, but beyond the center, geophysical evidence of the impact is lacking.

“That pattern is one of the last geophysical signatures that is still detectable, and that only happens for the largest-scale impact structures,” Huber said. Because only the deepest layers of the structure remain, the other geophysical traces have disappeared.

But that’s okay, because Huber wanted to know just how reliable those deep layers are for recording ancient impacts from both a mineralogical and geophysical perspective.

“Erosion makes these structures disappear from the top down,” Huber said. “So we went from the bottom up.”

The researchers sampled rock cores across a 22-kilometer (13.7-mile) transect and analyzed their physical properties, searching for differences in density, porosity and mineralogy between impacted and non-impacted rocks. They also modeled the impact event and what its effects on rock and mineral physics would be and compared that to what they saw in their samples.

What they found was not encouraging for the search for Earth’s oldest craters. While some impact melt and minerals remained, the rocks in the outer ridges of the Vredefort structure were essentially indistinguishable from the non-impact rocks around them when viewed through a geophysical lens.

“That was not exactly the result we were expecting,” Huber said. “The difference, where there was any, was incredibly muted. It took us a while to really make sense of the data. Ten kilometers of erosion and all the geophysical evidence of the impact just disappears, even with the largest craters,” confirming what geophysicists had estimated previously.

The researchers caught Vredefort just in time; if much more erosion occurs, the impact structure will be gone. The odds of finding buried impact structures from more than 2 billion years ago are low, Huber said.

“In order to have an Archean impact crater preserved until today, it would have to have experienced really unusual conditions of preservation,” Huber said. “But then, Earth is full of unusual conditions. So maybe there’s something unexpected somewhere, and so we keep looking.”

#

AGU (www.agu.org) is a global community supporting more than half a million advocates and professionals in Earth and space sciences. Through broad and inclusive partnerships, AGU aims to advance discovery and solution science that accelerate knowledge and create solutions that are ethical, unbiased and respectful of communities and their values. Our programs include serving as a scholarly publisher, convening virtual and in-person events and providing career support. We live our values in everything we do, such as our net zero energy renovated building in Washington, D.C. and our Ethics and Equity Center, which fosters a diverse and inclusive geoscience community to ensure responsible conduct.

***

Notes for journalists:

This paper is published in JGR Planets with open access. View and download a PDF of the study here.

Paper title:

“Can Archean impact structures be discovered? A case study from Earth’s largest, most deeply eroded impact structure”

Authors:

• Matthew S. Huber (corresponding author), Department of Earth Science, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa
• E. Kovaleva, Department of Earth Science, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa; Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, GFZ, Potsdam, Germany
• A.S.P. Rae, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
• N. Tisato, Department of Geological Sciences, Jackson School of Geoscience, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, US; Center for Planetary Systems Habitability, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, US
• S.P.S. Gulick, Department of Geological Sciences, Jackson School of Geoscience, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, US; Center for Planetary Systems Habitability, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, US; Institute for Geophysics, Jackson School of Geoscience, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, US

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Geophysical Research Planets

DOI

10.1029/2022JE007721 

ARTICLE TITLE

Can Archean Impact Structures Be Discovered? A Case Study From Earth's Largest, Most Deeply Eroded Impact Structure

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Aug-2023

 

Teamwork environments linked to white US employees going the extra mile

Study of effort at work suggests factors associated with “quiet quitting” may vary among genders, ethnoracial groups

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: THE FINDINGS SET THE STAGE FOR FURTHER RESEARCH THAT COULD INFORM EMPLOYERS’ INITIATIVES TO BOOST WORKER EFFORT. view more 

CREDIT: NENAD STOJKOVIC, FLICKR, CC-BY 2.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/2.0/)

In an analysis of more than 5,000 people, frequently working in teams was associated with a greater tendency for women and white men to put in extra effort at work, while other links between job conditions and effort varied between genders and ethnoracial groups. Wei-hsin Yu of the University of California, Los Angeles, US, and Janet Chen-Lan Kuo of National Taiwan University, Taiwan, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 2, 2023.

Popular media has recently featured discussion of “quiet quitting,” in which employees put the bare minimum of effort into their jobs without going the extra mile. Prior research on employee effort has primarily focused on how the responsibilities of family might impact workers’ efforts. However, few studies have examined other job conditions that might influence discretionary effort.

To address that gap, Yu and Kuo examined data from 2,706 male and 2,621 female participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, which regularly gathers information on US residents born in the 1980s. They assessed participants’ reports on the amount of effort they exerted at work in the context of typical job conditions associated with their occupations.

Of all job conditions considered, workplace social dynamics stood out as a key condition associated with worker effort. Specifically, men and women with jobs involving frequent teamwork tended to report exerting extra effort. However, among men, this association only held up for white workers, with no such link seen for non-white men.

Women who worked full time instead of part time and those whose employers provide paid maternity leave were more likely to exert extra effort. Women in male-dominated occupations or whose jobs necessitate confrontations with others were less likely to put in extra effort.

Additional differences between white and non-white workers were apparent. For instance, the association between effort and time spent at work was weaker for Black women than for white women.

These findings do not confirm any causal relationships between job conditions and work effort. However, they set the stage for further research that could inform employers’ initiatives to boost worker effort and reduce “quiet quitting.”

The authors add: “Our research suggests that interpersonal dynamics in the workplace are important to workers’ motivation to put extra effort. Although this research does not directly observe changes in the workplace since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we can imagine that the rise in remote working from home since then could have made the social interactions and comparisons that typically occur at work seem more distant and abstract, thereby having implications for workers’ motivations and productivity.”

#####

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0288521

Citation: Yu W-h, Kuo JC-L (2023) Going the extra mile at work: Relationships between working conditions and discretionary work effort. PLoS ONE 18(8): e0288521. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288521

Author Countries: USA, Taiwan

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

---

JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0288521 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Going the extra mile at work: Relationships between working conditions and discretionary work effort

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

2-Aug-2023

Speech deepfakes frequently fool humans, even after training on how to detect them

New study suggests improving automated detectors may be the best tactic to deal with speech deepfakes

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: THE RESEARCHERS SUGGEST THAT TRAINING PEOPLE TO DETECT SPEECH DEEPFAKES IS UNREALISTIC, AND EFFORTS SHOULD FOCUS ON IMPROVING AUTOMATED DETECTORS. view more 

CREDIT: ADRIAN SWANCAR, UNSPLASH, CC0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/PUBLICDOMAIN/ZERO/1.0/)

In a study involving more than 500 people, participants correctly identified speech deepfakes only 73 percent of the time, and efforts to train participants to detect deepfakes had minimal effects. Kimberly Mai and colleagues at University College London, UK, presented these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 2, 2023.

Speech deepfakes are synthetic voices produced by machine-learning models. Deepfakes may resemble a specific real person’s voice, or they may be unique. Tools for making speech deepfakes have recently improved, raising concerns about security threats. For instance, they have already been used to trick bankers into authorizing fraudulent money transfers. Research on detecting speech deepfakes has primarily focused on automated, machine-learning detection systems, but few studies have addressed humans’ detection abilities.

Therefore, Mai and colleagues asked 529 people to complete an online activity that involved identifying speech deepfakes among multiple audio clips of both real human voices and deepfakes. The study was run in both English and Mandarin, and some participants were provided with examples of speech deepfakes to help train their detection skills.

Participants correctly identified deepfakes 73 percent of the time. Training participants to recognize deepfakes helped only slightly. Because participants were aware that some of the clips would be deepfakes—and because the researchers did not use the most advanced speech synthesis technology—people in real-world scenarios would likely perform worse than the study participants.

English and Mandarin speakers showed similar detection rates, though when asked to describe the speech features they used for detection, English speakers more often referenced breathing, while Mandarin speakers more often referenced cadence, pacing between words, and fluency.

The researchers also found that participants’ individual-level detection capabilities were worse than that of top-performing automated detectors. However, when averaged at the crowd-level, participants performed about as well as automated detectors and better handled unknown conditions for which automated detectors may not have been directly trained.

Speech deepfakes are likely to only become more difficult to detect. Given their findings, the researchers conclude that training people to detect speech deepfakes is unrealistic, and efforts should focus on improving automated detectors. However, they suggest that crowdsourcing evaluations on potential deepfake speech is a reasonable mitigation for now.

The authors add: “The study finds that humans could only detect speech deepfakes 73% of the time, and performance was the same in English and Mandarin.”

#####

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0285333

Citation: Mai KT, Bray S, Davies T, Griffin LD (2023) Warning: Humans cannot reliably detect speech deepfakes. PLoS ONE 18(5): e0285333. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285333

Author Countries: UK

Funding: KM and SB are supported by the Dawes Centre for Future Crime (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/future-crime/). KM is supported by EPSRC under grant EP/R513143/1 (https://www.ukri.org/councils/epsrc). SB is supported by EPSRC under grant EP/S022503/1. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

---

JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0285333 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Warning: Humans cannot reliably detect speech deepfakes

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

2-Aug-2023

Humans unable to detect over a quarter of deepfake speech samples

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

The study, published today in PLOS ONE, is the first to assess human ability to detect artificially generated speech in a language other than English.

Deepfakes are synthetic media intended to resemble a real person’s voice or appearance. They fall under the category of generative artificial intelligence (AI), a type of machine learning (ML) that trains an algorithm to learn the patterns and characteristics of a dataset, such as video or audio of a real person, so that it can reproduce original sound or imagery.

While early deepfake speech algorithms may have required thousands of samples of a person’s voice to be able to generate original audio, the latest pre-trained algorithms can recreate a person’s voice using just a three-second clip of them speaking1. Open-source algorithms are freely available and while some expertise would be beneficial, it would be feasible for an individual to train them within a few days2.

Tech firm Apple recently announced software for iPhone and iPad that allows a user to create a copy of their voice using 15 minutes of recordings3.

Researchers at UCL used a text-to-speech (TTS) algorithm trained on two publicly available datasets, one in English and one in Mandarin, to generate 50 deepfake speech samples in each language. These samples were different from the ones used to train the algorithm to avoid the possibility of it reproducing the original input.

These artificially generated samples and genuine samples were played for 529 participants to see whether they could detect the real thing from fake speech. Participants were only able to identify fake speech 73% of the time, which improved only slightly after they received training to recognise aspects of deepfake speech.

Kimberly Mai (UCL Computer Science), first author of the study, said: “Our findings confirm that humans are unable to reliably detect deepfake speech, whether or not they have received training to help them spot artificial content. It’s also worth noting that the samples that we used in this study were created with algorithms that are relatively old, which raises the question whether humans would be less able to detect deepfake speech created using the most sophisticated technology available now and in the future.”

The next step for the researchers is to develop better automated speech detectors as part of ongoing efforts to create detection capabilities to counter the threat of artificially generated audio and imagery.

Though there are benefits from generative AI audio technology, such as greater accessibility for those whose speech may be limited or who may lose their voice due to illness, there are growing fears that such technology could be used by criminals and nation states to cause significant harm to individuals and societies.

Documented cases of deepfake speech being used by criminals include one 2019 incident where the CEO of a British energy company was convinced to transfer hundreds of thousands of pounds to a false supplier by a deepfake recording of his boss’s voice4.

Professor Lewis Griffin (UCL Computer Science), senior author of the study, said: “With generative artificial intelligence technology getting more sophisticated and many of these tools openly available, we’re on the verge of seeing numerous benefits as well as risks. It would be prudent for governments and organisations to develop strategies to deal with abuse of these tools, certainly, but we should also recognise the positive possibilities that are on the horizon.”

Notes to Editors:

1 For more information, see the Microsoft website.

2 The Alan Turing Institute has published a report on voice cloning at scale, available here.

3 See the Apple website for more details.

4 More details of the case can be found on the Wall Street Journal.

For more information, please contact:

 Dr Matt Midgley

+44 (0)20 7679 9064

m.midgley@ucl.ac.uk

Publication:

Kimberly Mai et al. ‘Warning: humans cannot reliably detect speech deepfakes’ is published in PLOS ONE and is strictly embargoed until 2 August 2023 19:00 BST / 14:00 ET.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285333

About UCL – London’s Global University

UCL is a diverse global community of world-class academics, students, industry links, external partners, and alumni. Our powerful collective of individuals and institutions work together to explore new possibilities.

Since 1826, we have championed independent thought by attracting and nurturing the world's best minds. Our community of more than 50,000 students from 150 countries and over 16,000 staff pursues academic excellence, breaks boundaries and makes a positive impact on real world problems.

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For almost 200 years, we are proud to have opened higher education to students from a wide range of backgrounds and to change the way we create and share knowledge.

We were the first in England to welcome women to university education and that courageous attitude and disruptive spirit is still alive today. We are UCL.

www.ucl.ac.uk | Follow @uclnews on Twitter | Read news at www.ucl.ac.uk/news/ | Listen to UCL podcasts on SoundCloud | Find out what’s on at UCL Minds

---

JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0285333 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Warning: humans cannot reliably detect speech deepfakes

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

2-Aug-2023

Study exposes plight of deported noncitizen veterans

UC Riverside-led research shows how deportation acts as a social determinant of health

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - RIVERSIDE

 

IMAGE: PHOTO SHOWS STUDY PARTICIPANTS USING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION IN TIJUANA, MEXICO. view more 

CREDIT: ANN CHENEY, UC RIVERSIDE.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A study examining the effects of deportation on the health and wellbeing of noncitizen veterans who served in the United States military has found that this group is a vulnerable and often unrecognized health disparity population.

Overseen by Ann Cheney, an associate professor of social medicine, population, and public health in the School of Medicine at the University of California, Riverside, the study reports the post-deportation economic, social, and political conditions of living abroad harm veterans’ physical and psychological health. Many prioritize returning to the U.S., the country they served, to improve their quality of life. 

The study, published in PLOS Global Public Health, involved interviews conducted in Tijuana, Mexico, from December 2018 to January 2019. A total of 12 male veterans who were returned to this “deportation city” participated in the research and were included in the analysis. The study used photovoice, a research method that uses photography and narrative text, to capture the veterans’ experiences. Each participant took photos and selected two or three to represent the experience of a deported veteran and was invited to comment on how the photos could inform policymakers about the social and health needs of deported veterans.

Study participants were at least 18 years of age, U.S. veterans of any service era, Mexican citizens by birth, lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years, were deported to Mexico in the last 20 years, and resided in Tijuana. The average age of the participants was 56 years and the average age at entry into the U.S. was six years. 

“Our analysis of their photos and narrative text indicates that deportation caused them social, economic, and political insecurities,” Cheney said. “We found that after they were deported from the U.S., these veterans struggled to maintain access to necessities. With disruptions in their social networks, and the removal from the country many considered home, they experienced chronic stress and poor health outcomes.”

The U.S. has a total of 19 million veterans. Latinos of Mexican and Central American origin are overrepresented in the veteran population deported from the U.S. More than 80% of deported veterans report medical issues and nearly 75% lack access to healthcare after deportation. Poor physical and mental health and the effects of combat-related violence and trauma can increase homelessness, strained interpersonal relationships, substance use, legal trouble, and difficulty in maintaining employment.

“Veterans often struggle to assimilate to civilian life post-discharge, but this transition is especially risky for noncitizen veterans,” Cheney said. “It is no wonder half of our participants reported that returning to the U.S. was most important for their quality of life—many had been living in the U.S. since childhood, spoke English only, and had no family or friends in Mexico. Securing income and accessing healthcare were their next highest priorities. Our findings highlight how deportation places such groups in vulnerable positions, contributing to their stress and harming their health.”

The study also found the deported veterans:

• Voiced disbelief about how the U.S. could dispose of them after they risked their lives to protect, what they considered, their country
• Remained loyal to the U.S., with many indicating they would serve again in the U.S. military
• Self-identified as “American” and believed the U.S. is their home 
• Described their situation as being stuck in “limbo,” with their lack of Spanish proficiency hindering their ability to assimilate
• Experienced loss of food, housing, and medical care
• Were often homeless and food insecure
• Reported challenges finding and securing jobs in Mexico, with public transportation issues being a common barrier to employment
• Could not contact their families for extensive periods of time, often because they felt guilty
• Frequently experienced depression, loneliness, and anxiety due to feelings of helplessness and despair
• Experienced chronic illness and disease, such as hypertension and diabetes
• Used substances to cope with deportation.

“Without change in our nation’s policies, noncitizen veterans will continue to be present in our immigration system and face deportation charges,” Cheney said. “Attention needs to be urgently paid to addressing behavioral health conditions in this population. In Mexico, deported veterans need to be trained to speak Spanish and develop skills needed for employment. They also need immediate access to free healthcare services, specifically mental healthcare services, to cope with loss, grief, and isolation linked to the trauma of deportation.”

Cheney stressed that deported veterans need to continue their connection with their family and friends in the U.S. and establish new networks in Mexico. By connecting these veterans to community-based peer support groups, they can find community and identity with other veterans, she said.

“Non-citizen military personnel often think entering the military automatically puts them on the path to citizenship,” Cheney explained. “But that’s not true. They often think this because they are misinformed. Too often military leadership and recruiters do not know the naturalization process for non-citizen service members and misinform them, leading them to believe they are already or will become citizens. Military leaders and recruiters need training on the naturalization process, so they communicate correctly with recruits and service members. Additionally, we need reform to the immigration process to facilitate the pathway to citizenship for service members and veterans who served in the U.S. military.”

Cheney was joined in the research by project co-leader Frances Tao of UCLA, Cassidy T. Lee of the School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona, and Edgar Castelan of the California State Senate, San Bernardino.

The study was supported by the UCR School of Medicine and University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS).

The research paper is titled “Social Determinants of Health among Noncitizen Deported US Veterans: A Participatory Action Study.”

The University of California, Riverside is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment is more than 26,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual impact of more than $2.7 billion on the U.S. economy. To learn more, visit www.ucr.edu.

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JOURNAL

PLOS Global Public Health

DOI

10.1371/journal.pgph.0002190 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Social Determinants of Health among Noncitizen Deported US Veterans: A Participatory Action Study

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

2-Aug-2023

 

Interest in bird feeding surged in over 100 countries worldwide during the COVID-19 lockdowns

Countries with higher bird diversity tended to show more interest in bird-related Google searches

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: A GREEN CATBIRD FROM NORTHERN AUSTRALIA EATING FOOD SET OUT ON A POST BIRD FEEDER. view more 

CREDIT: MARK BROADHURST, PEXELS, CC0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/PUBLICDOMAIN/ZERO/1.0/)

Interest in local bird feeding appears to have ramped up in countries all over the world during the pandemic lockdowns, even in countries not historically noted for bird feeding practices, according to a study published August 2, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jacqueline Doremus from California Polytechnic State University and Liqing Li from Texas A&M University College Station, US, and Darryl Jones from Griffith University, Australia.

Feeding wild birds is a popular nature-based pastime because of its simplicity, low cost, and accessibility in even urban environments. Previous research has shown that there was a surge of interest in bird identification and bird feeding in the US and some European countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, the authors analyzed whether there was increased interest in bird feeding and wild birds at a global, individual-country scale during and after COVID-19 lockdowns compared to before. They also examined whether the level of interest in bird feeding in a country is linked to species richness.

The authors assessed the weekly frequency of search terms like “bird feeder", "bird food", and "bird bath” on Google for all countries with sufficient search volumes from January 1, 2019 to May 31, 2020 to see if an increase in bird searches occurred during each country’s specific lockdown period (generally around February-April 2020). They also accessed nation-level bird species data from BirdLife International to measure species richness.

There was a significant surge in bird feeding interest as measured by frequency of bird-related searches across 115 of the countries surveyed during the general lockdown period, in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

Countries that lacked bird-related search interest had an average of 294 bird species (standard deviation 288.6 species), whereas countries that demonstrated a bird search interest had an average of 511 bird species (standard deviation 400.5 species), a significant increase in bird diversity over countries measured as less interested.

Because the proxy measurement for bird feeding interest is a Google search, countries with lower income or less internet access may not have been adequately captured despite their bird feeding practices. However, the authors note that their method was still able to capture a surge of interest in bird feeding not limited to traditional locations like the UK and US—e.g., Pakistan and Kenya.

The COVID-19 lockdowns likely encouraged people all over the world to seek connection and interaction with their local bird communities; the authors hope future studies can further analyze the global extent of bird feeding and specifically capture more data in previously understudied countries.

The authors add: “Up until now, most evidence on bird feeding has been limited to the US, Europe, Australia and India, however we suspected bird feeding might be more widespread. This is important to know because bird feeding affects bird health and migration patterns. Our study uses COVID restrictions to reveal interest in bird feeding worldwide, and we find that people on six continents, in both hemispheres, are interested in feeding birds.”

#####

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287116

Citation: Doremus J, Li L, Jones D (2023) Covid-related surge in global wild bird feeding: Implications for biodiversity and human-nature interaction. PLoS ONE 18(8): e0287116. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287116

Author Countries: USA, Australia

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

---

JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0287116 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Covid-related surge in global wild bird feeding: Implications for biodiversity and human-nature interaction

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

2-Aug-2023

Lockdowns create global appetite for feeding feathered friends

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY

A team of researchers have highlighted the role that the COVID-19 pandemic played in connecting people around the world more with our feathered friends while in lockdowns, finding a surge in interest for bird feeding information and providing more insight into global human-birds interactions.

Professor Emeritus Darryl Jones, from Griffith’s Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security, and the research team used Google search index (a valid proxy parameter from Google Trends data) and found a surge of interest in bird feeding in 115 countries after Covid-19 led to lockdowns where people stayed home.

Professor Jones, alongside lead author Associate Professor Jackie Doremus from California Polytechnic State University and Dr Liqing Li from Texas A&M University, investigated two interdependent questions:

• Was there evidence of increased interest in bird feeding and related topics at a global scale after Covid-19 lockdowns, relative to before?
• And is species richness correlated with the level of interest in bird feeding?

“We know from other work that interests in common bird species and bird feeding increased in response to Covid in the U.S. and some European countries during the Covid-19 pandemic,” Professor Jones said.

“This study first tests whether this pattern - increased interest in bird feeding in response to Covid-19 lockdowns – holds true for all countries, including those in the Southern Hemisphere.

“If so, Covid-19 lockdowns offered a way to reveal the global extent of bird feeding interest, something that is poorly understood.

“Our results asserted that bird feeding was occurring at a global scale; large increases in Google search intensity after lockdowns occurred in 115 countries that had sufficient search volumes.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to measure people’s interest in bird feeding at a global scale.”

The authors analysed whether there was increased interest in bird feeding and wild birds at a global, individual-country scale during and after COVID-19 lockdowns compared with before. They also examined whether the level of interest in bird feeding in a country is linked to species richness.

The authors assessed the weekly frequency of search terms like “bird feeder", "bird food", and "bird bath” on Google for all countries with sufficient search volumes from January 1, 2019 to May 31, 2020 to see if an increase in bird searches occurred during each country’s specific lockdown period (generally around February-April 2020).

They also accessed nation-level bird species data from BirdLife International to measure species richness.

For a period of 52 weeks prior to lockdowns, the team found that the search intensity was, on average, similar to what it was in the week preceding lockdowns.

After about two weeks of lockdowns, a dramatic increase in bird feeding search intensity was evident. The result mirrored the interest in these topics found in the US, where bird feeding interest is well-documented.

The extensive practice of supplementary bird feeding around the world as documented in this study has broad implications for avian communities and their migratory patterns.

Professor Jones said that while providing supplementary food for wild birds could be beneficial for them in terms of survival during periods of resource scarcity and improved health, there was also evidence to suggest that bird feeding may alter ecological communities and potentially have negative effects on biodiversity.

“If bird feeding is common in other parts of the world, this could impact migration and disease patterns,” he said.

“It is imperative that we understand the global extent of bird feeding in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of its potential impacts on both avian and human well-being at a continental and global scale.”

Regarding possible reasons for the increased behaviour towards bird feeding during Covid lockdowns, the team suggested it likely related to changes in the relative cost of alternative forms of leisure activities, as well as increases in the benefits from connecting with nature during a stressful time.

“Given the relationship between the practice of bird feeding, human mental health, and a variety of pro-environmental attributes, the implications are of great significance for human well-being and biodiversity conservation,” Professor Jones said.

“If access to other nature-based activities was also reduced, this would make bird feeding seem relatively more attractive.

“Moreover, forced time at home during lockdowns may have increased opportunities for people to notice birds in their gardens and may have piqued their interest in bird feeding.”

The team suggested future work should further explore bird feeding patterns in parts of the world with limited formal data collection and increase the cultural and biophysical diversity of settings where local bird feeding is studied.

The findings ‘Covid-related surge in global wild bird feeding: Implications for biodiversity and human-nature interaction’ have been published in PLOS ONE.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0287116 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Covid-related surge in global wild bird feeding: Implications for biodiversity and human-nature interaction

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

2-Aug-2023