The Maunakea Observatories on the Big Island of Hawaii are currently closed due to concerns about COVID-19. The summit of Maunakea is ideal for ground-based astronomy given its dark skies, low humidity, generally great weather, and high elevation (nearly 14,000 feet) above the clouds that together provide excellent seeing conditions.

Dr. Rachel Smith, head of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Lab at the North Carolina Museum fo Natural Sciences is waiting to see how her observations of massive forming stars at NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility at Maunakea planned for June and July might be impacted.

Operations at UNC Chapel Hill’s Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope high in Chile’s Andes mountains were similarly suspended a month ago. Like most observatories, a minimal crew is visiting the site to check on conditions and ensure consumables like fuel to power generators and liquid nitrogen to cool optics according to SOAR Director Jay Elias.

Even telescopes which are capable of being remotely operated remotely are affected by stay-at-home orders. “You still need staff on the mountain to run them and provide maintenance and technical support” explains says Dr. Chris Mihos, an astronomer at Case Western Reserve University.

When we are able to get back to whatever a new “business as usual” ends up looking like, the impact some sciences will be greater than the time lost during stay-at-home orders.

“My biggest research project has now been delayed by a whole year,” says Mihos “The target galaxies we are studying are only visible in the spring.”

Some researchers worry about lost “once-in-a-lifetime” moments at abandoned field sites.

Researchers studying chimps at Kibale National Park in Uganda and how they interact have stopped their investigations and left the country. The beginnings of an event similar to one Jane Goodall described as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” were observed at the Kibale site two years ago.

John Mitani, a primatologist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor told Science magazine that precautions make sense for both humans and chimps. According to a preliminary report from geneticists at the University of Calgary, primates are likely vulnerable to COVID-19 as well.

The greatest long term impact may be in widening gaps in data.

The North American Breeding Bird Survey is a joint project between U.S. Geological Survey, Canadian Wildlife Service, and Mexican National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity. The citizen science project involving over 2500 skilled amateur birders and professional biologists each spring has been canceled for 2020 according to Science.

”There’s never been another time in history where we’ve seen an essentially global cessation of surveys and data collection about species and ecosystems,” says Ben Halpern, an ecologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara.