Indicators of Environmental Recovery during the First Lockdown of COVID-19 Pandemic: Is this a Permanent or a Temporary?

Upon the outbreak and spreading of COVID-19, several reduction measures have been implemented throughout the world to avert the COVID-19 pandemic risks such as entire lockdowns, social distancing, extensive travel bans, mass quarantines, etc. Many positive and negative indicators of this pandemic on the whole environmental compartments have been reported worldwide. These indicators may include promoting the air quality through a reduction in anthropogenic-based emissions (e.g., CO2 and N2O) and increase ozone concentration in addition to energy, water and wastewater, deforestation, and natural resources. This is the difficult equation concerningthe COVID-19 pandemic outbreak and its health, societal, economic, and environmental risks and how is the recovery of the environment? Is this recovery will be permanent or temporary? The answer to this question may be emphasized during the outcoming days or months. What will increase this global pandemic aggravation if the COVID-19 has appeared in many types, which enforce us to re-think again concerning the task?

Is nano-biofortification the right approach for malnutrition in the era of COVID-19 and climate change?

Human health may depend on the environment and its compartments, which may include climatic factors. These climatic factors and their changes might impact on human health particularly the outbreak of pandemics like COVID-19. The combined stress resulted from climate changes and COVID-19 could be noticed in several countries especially in the developing countries. Malnutrition is considered one of the most important problems in the developing countries in particular under the droughts, flooding, and other climatic events. Malnutrition was aggravated under COVID-19 outbreak in these countries due to the closure of borders between countries, the crisis of global trade, and the global food insecurity. The biofortification process is the sustainable solution to overcome malnutrition, which included very recently using nano-nutrients as called nano-biofortification. The approach of nano-biofortification is a promising tool in producing biofortified edible plants, otherwise this tool still needs more studies to answer the open questions like which nano-nutrients can be used in nano-biofortification? Which recommended doses and crops are considered suitable candidates?

Soil and Air Pollution in the Era of COVID-19: A Global Issue

THE COVID-19 pandemic began to emerge by the end of 2019, creating an unprecedented and dramatic world-wide catastrophe. The SARS-CoV-2 virus has already changed the global map and forced the world to start a new era in which no one can predict the volume of social, economic and environmental changes that will occur world-wide. Soil and air are two compartments of the agroecosystem that represent two vital columns of the environment's structure. Due to social distancing, lockdowns and quarantines, air pollution was reduced in several cities worldwide, whereas this relationship for soil as a complex system still needs more investigation. The most immediate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on soils and vice versa probably depend primarily on human activities. Management of soils may include restoring soils from and increasing resilience to viral impacts and sustaining crop yields for long-term sustainability to keep the soil healthy for future generations. Therefore, this review is an attempt to highlight the mutual impact of COVID-19 on pollution of soil and air. Many open questions are discussed in this review article, including the expected environmental impacts of COVID-19 on soil and air, does soil play a role in spreading COVID-19, soil pollution status under the COVID-19 outbreak, and what are the projected management scenarios for soil and air pollution under the COVID-19 outbreak?