"Hello everyone, my name is Luis Garcia pronouns: He/Him/His. My goal is to convey the symbiotic relationship between deforestation, zoonotic diseases, and air pollution.

Some of the reasons why deforestation occurs are due to agricultural use, grazing, use of timber for fuel or charcoal, infrastructure expansion, and both legal and illegal logging. Many countries have been victimized by illegal deforestation due to relaxed environmental policies or laws and due to insufficient funds. Most illegal logging derives from international companies that do not replenish trees.

The impacts of deforestation can be categorized into three major components such as environmental, economic, and social.

As the rate of deforestation continues to steadily increase every year without the enforcement of any protection policy or laws, we can also expect an increased risk of zoonotic disease outbreaks due to exposures to new bacterial and or viral pathogens.

Zoonotic diseases are caused by bacteria or viruses' that spread between animals and people. Acts such as deforestation, have been linked to an increase of zoonoses outbreaks. As rates of mass clearing of trees increase, so do zoonotic disease outbreaks. "Nearly 50% of zoonotic diseases that have emerged in humans are associated with agricultural drivers" (9).

Being aware and able to fully comprehend the seriousness of anthropogenic influences on land-use changes and how they are integrated with rates of pathogen exposures that lead to disease outbreaks is of vital importance, this knowledge may allow researchers to anticipate hotspots of disease emergence.

Another environmental effect of deforestation is the release of carbon into the atmosphere as a gas, contributing a huge role in climate change. There is an annual average release of 0.8-0.9 gigatons of CO2 emissions just from protected forests. Conversion of deforested land to pasture, agriculture, and urbanization will continue to produce ongoing carbon emissions, causing a higher concentration of air pollution (4).

The anthropogenic impact has diminished the number of trees on earth by 46 percent; it is estimated that there are over three trillion trees around the world, but more than 15 billion are cut down each year. Due to the deforestation of old-growth forests, there has been an increase in the world's carbon emissions by 10-15 percent, rising global temperatures and causing ecosystem disruption (4).

Furthermore, deforestation takes on the responsibility of particulate matter, which constitutes an array of solid and liquid particles that include both organic and inorganic particles such as ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and lead (7). Smaller particles, called PM_2.5, are considered to be even more dangerous due to the fact that they can get into the deep parts of the lungs or enter the bloodstream.

Particulate matter that is diffused by biomass burning during the deforestation process influences "premature human mortality [that] aggravates the health impacts of the current pandemic, as air pollution exacerbates the respiratory problems resulting from COVID-19 infection" (6). Fires deriving from tropical forests discharge particulate matter and stored carbon, which are large-scale contributors to global air pollution.

Therefore, enforcing stricter laws & policies that protect the forests such as adopting land, geo-tagging, DNA analysis of tree & plant species, securing land tenure that protects indigenous peoples' rights can increase carbon sequestration. Also aids in water purification, nutrient cycling, and maintains the healthy diversity of flora and fauna. Simply adopting 335.4-466.1 million hectares of non-degraded forests from 2020-2050 can avert 5.52-8.75 gigatons of carbon dioxide, while protecting a total carbon stock of 655.8-742.8 gigatons of carbon-dioxide equivalent (4). Not only would this approach conserve and mitigate carbon emissions, but it would also have constructive influences over ecosystem services that include habitat, erosion control, soil-building, increased pollination, preservation of resources, water regulation, water supply, and environmental justice for indigenous communities and rural communities that thrive and depend on the forest (3).

The main focus of forest restoration is to manage long-term resilience by restoring functionality and maintaining natural ecosystems. The use of degraded land enhances plant growth and microbial activity, increasing biomass, promoting soil carbon sequestration, and improving food security by improving yields. Adopting and practicing "regenerative agroculture" and agroforestry cultivates biomass and regenerates carbon soil sequestration, which mitigates climate change and reduces the amount of air pollution into the atmosphere (5).

Collectively, integrating both forest protection & forest restoration efforts can lead towards a more substantial & beneficiary change on both a local and global scale that strongly influences human & environmental health. Establishing local and global efforts to protect and restore forests will help decrease air pollution, decrease zoonotic diseases, and not only sustain but increase biodiversity in ecosystems. Implementing strategies to prevent further deforestation and advocate the protection of forests consist of public policy, market-driven mechanisms, and programs that enable wealthy nations and corporations to invest in countries and communities hosting the forests.