Browsing by Subject "COVID-19"
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(2023)The anthropause following the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 was followed by a heavy decline in people’s mobility and outdoor activities, which has had differing effects on biodiversity in urban areas. In Finland, outdoor activities were allowed, and as a result, the use of greenspaces increased notably in relation to pre-pandemic times. My objective was to study how people’s outdoor activities developed during the pandemic in the form of recreational bird-watching in the Helsinki metropolitan area (including Espoo, Vantaa, and Kauniainen). To accomplish this, I retrieved data on the number of bird observers from Tiira (a Finnish bird information service focused on bird observations), and related this data to the pandemic periods, also taking into account variables such as daily temperature and the use of parks. I found the highest number of bird-watchers during both lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. I also found that the number of bird-watchers was significantly higher after all restrictions were lifted, in 2022, when contrasted with pre-pandemic times. It is notable that the lockdowns happened at the same time as the bird Spring migration, a naturally popular time among bird-watchers. Thus, I consider that this may have had a synergistic role in people taking the opportunity to dedicate more time for bird-watching since they had more time to go outside due to strict restrictions. After all the restrictions were lifted in 2022, some bird-watchers continued to spend more time in bird-watching due to habit or increased appreciation for the activity or outdoors. The findings highlight the importance and potential of citizen science in observing birds and enabling more efficient conservation efforts for them. The results showing the development of bird-watching activities during the pandemic could also potentially be used as a proxy for other outdoor activities, and combined with other studies on the relations of COVID-19 on humans and other species could help to better understand the complex socio-ecological relationships in cities and greenspaces.
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(2021)During the Covid-19 pandemic in Finland, there was a debate about the usefulness of face masks in suppressing the epidemic. Lack of scientific knowledge was emphasised in the debate, and the participants sought to define the role of science in decision-making. In this thesis, the ways in which ignorance and uncertainty were discussed and used to define the boundaries of science in the Finnish face mask debate are studied. In the theoretical part of the thesis, the meanings of ignorance and uncertainty are clarified and the boundary-work of science as well as uncertainty as a boundary-ordering device are discussed. The politicisation of non-knowledge and the characteristics of policy-relevant science are also examined. In the empirical part, the knowledge/non-knowledge claims of the Finnish experts and decision-makers who participated in the face mask debate are analysed. The data consists of 99 quotations collected from news articles published from March 1 to October 31, 2020. Qualitative frame analysis is employed to examine the forms of knowledge and ignorance along with the boundary-ordering devices used in the debate. The results show that experts working at the science-policy boundary highlighted uncertainty and ignorance most often. They also used uncertainty as a boundary-ordering device the most, although overall, this came up very rarely in the debate. The main discrepancy was between the assessments of different expert bodies, as research scientists did not usually mention the underlying uncertainties of scientific findings. Different actors had different approaches towards knowledge and ignorance, reflecting differences in epistemic cultures. Regulatory science and academic science have different criteria for assessing the credibility of knowledge. Moreover, not all ignorance and uncertainty in decision-making can be reduced with scientific methods. Therefore, more resilient decision-making processes should be developed, in which ignorance and limitations of scientific knowledge are identified and embedded in the decisions.
Now showing items 1-2 of 2