Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement: Urban Environmental Geography, Public Health, and Pest Animals in US Cities, 1850-Present

近年来，生态学家和环境政策制定者对城市生态系统越来越感兴趣，在城市生态系统中，社会和自然系统的界面给改革努力带来了独特的挑战。探索这些相互作用的一个肥沃领域是被识别为“有害动物”的动物与与其生活纠缠在一起的人类之间复杂而不断变化的关系。有害动物涉及多种健康风险，其中包括从斑疹伤寒到西尼罗河病毒的传染病，接触用于控制害虫的杀虫剂，以及室内过敏原，如节肢动物粪便。这个项目将研究贫困、自然环境和虫害防治战略如何塑造从1850年到现在的美国城市人与虫害相互作用的历史地理。主要目的是解释城市有害动物的分布；评估过去干预有害动物问题的效果；并展示社区如何应对与有害动物问题有关的政治挑战。人口和健康数据的空间分析将显示贫困、住房和城市发展如何影响害虫种群的分布。研究人员将分析档案材料、过去的科学研究和采访，以重建虫害控制计划，并参照城市生态系统和流行病学了解它们是如何失败或成功的。这项研究还将在改变人们对环境和城市动物的态度的背景下，追踪关于虫害控制的想法。这项研究将揭示政治争议如何影响虫害种群居高不下的社区；初步调查结果显示，社区抵制了虫害的空间污名，并面临着实施虫害控制的预防性方法的困难。初步结果还表明，低收入、市中心社区和郊区边缘地区都经历了意想不到的后果的生态，例如，本世纪中叶和今天在城市重建地点和分区周围的有害生物种群增长，以及在努力预防虫媒疾病的过程中接触到有毒杀虫剂。分析人类群落、城市自然环境和城市野生动物种群之间的历史关系将有助于解释当前的城市环境和健康问题。通过追踪过去公共、私人、科学和激进机构对害虫的反应中的失败、不公正和成功，研究人员将能够为当今保护城市社区免受与害虫有关的疾病的努力提供信息。该项目还对当前在城市中培育健康生态系统的努力产生了影响：城市动物和新出现的疾病媒介对城市生态项目构成了伦理和现实挑战，该项目将回顾过去，以此作为解决这些问题的指南。

Ecologists and environmental policymakers have in recent years become increasingly interested in urban ecosystems, where the interface of social and natural systems poses unique challenges for reform efforts. One fertile domain for exploring these interactions is the complex and changing relationship between animals identified as "pests" and the human beings whose lives are entangled with them. Pest animals have been implicated in many kinds of health risks, among them infectious diseases ranging from typhus to West Nile virus, exposure to pesticides used to control vermin, and indoor allergens such as arthropod feces. This project will examine how poverty, the physical environment, and pest control strategies have shaped the historical geography of human-pest interactions in US cities from 1850 to the present. The main objectives are to explain distributions of urban pest animals; to assess the effects of past interventions in pest problems; and to show how communities navigated political challenges related to pest problems. Spatial analysis of demographic and health data will show how poverty, housing, and urban development influenced the distribution of pest populations. The researchers will analyze archival materials, past scientific research, and interviews to reconstruct pest control programs and understand how they failed or succeeded with reference to urban ecosystems and epidemiology. The study will also trace ideas about pest control in the context of shifting attitudes toward the environment and urban animals. The study will reveal how political controversies affected neighborhoods with high pest populations; preliminary findings show that communities have resisted the spatial stigma of infestation, and have faced difficulties implementing preventive approaches to pest control. Initial results also suggest that both low-income, inner-city communities and suburban fringe areas have experienced the ecology of unintended consequences, for example the growth of pest populations at urban renewal sites mid-century and around subdivisions today, and exposure to toxic pesticides in the course of efforts to protect against pest-borne illness. The analysis of historical relationships among human communities, the urban physical environment, and populations of urban wildlife will help to explain current urban environmental and health problems. By tracing failures, injustices, and successes in past responses to vermin by public, private, scientific, and activist institutions, the researchers will be able to inform present-day efforts to protect urban communities from pest-related disease. The project also bears implications for current efforts to cultivate healthy ecological systems in cities: urban animals and emerging disease vectors pose both ethical and practical challenges for urban ecology programs, and this project will examine the past as a guide to addressing these problems.