The Land Use Land Cover Change-Emerging Infectious Disease Nexus Reconsidered

Deforestation due to Land Use – Land Cover (LULC) change has been linked to the risk of emerging zoonotic disease despite limited local level data on suck outbreaks. This forum reevaluates this risk inference using newly release data on zoonotic disease outbreaks, accounting for Structural One Health features, including socioeconomic development and armed conflict. Event and time series data on disease and forest coverage anomalies at the 0.5-degree level for every month between January 2003 and December 2018 are used to estimate the relationship between LULC and zoonosis using Poisson generalized additive and generalized linear models. Once adjusted for Structural One Health features, outbreak risk is 7%-200% higher in areas that experienced forest coverage reversion. These results highlight the importance of accounting for Structural One Health features when analyzing complex socio-ecological phenomena like the LULC-infectious disease nexus.