How land use change transforms the landscape of vector-borne disease

人类引起的生态和社会变化正在以前所未有的速度和全球范围改变传染病的格局。预测和预防疾病蔓延是人类的一个重要目标，这需要了解驱动传染病传播的基本生态机制。病媒传播的疾病-那些通过叮咬节肢动物如蚊子和蜱传播的疾病，包括疟疾，登革热，西尼罗河，寨卡和莱姆病，对环境变化高度敏感，因为病媒在人类影响的环境中生活，繁殖和叮咬宿主。本研究调查了土地利用中的生态变化（如森林砍伐、农业集约化和无计划的城市化）影响病媒传播疾病传播的机制。该项目将建设STEM研究和教育能力，重点是促进多样性和开放获取科学，包括地理空间数据分析教程。研究结果将被纳入对政策制定者直接有用的工具，包括为InVEST软件的开发提供信息，该软件描述了自然生态系统如何支持人类健康和福利，目前在180多个国家使用，该项目解决了三个问题：（1）土地利用变化如何影响媒介、宿主和病原体的分布和驱动疾病传播的特征？(2)土地利用变化对实地大规模观察的病媒传播疾病发病率有多重要？(3)土地利用通过何种社会经济、行为和生态机制影响田间病媒传播疾病的传播？这一假设是，土地利用集约化的动态梯度导致不同病媒传播疾病的生态适宜性发生变化，导致从森林黄热病和某些形式的利什曼病到早期土地转换期间的疟疾，再到郊区和城市蚊子传播的虫媒病毒。这项研究将通过为每一种重点疾病开发基于特征的流行病学传播模型来编纂这一假设。接下来，该研究将在计量经济学统计回归框架中使用关于人类疾病，环境和人口的大规模地理空间数据来测试环境与疾病传播之间的关系。最后，该研究将通过调查病媒丰度、病原体存在、人类行为和社会经济条件，结合土地利用迅速变化的实地环境中的当地规模疾病发病率数据，深入研究当地的传播动态。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Human-induced ecological and social changes are transforming the landscape of infectious disease at a scale unprecedented in both speed and global reach. Anticipating and preventing disease expansions is a critical goal for humanity, which requires understanding fundamental ecological mechanisms that drive infectious disease transmission. Vector-borne diseases—those transmitted by biting arthropods like mosquitoes and ticks, including malaria, dengue, West Nile, Zika, and Lyme disease, are highly sensitive to environmental change because vectors live, breed, and bite hosts in the human-impacted environment. This research investigates the mechanisms by which ecological changes in land use, such as deforestation, agricultural intensification, and unplanned urbanization, affect vector-borne disease transmission. The project will build capacity in STEM research and education, focusing on promoting diversity and open access to science and including a geospatial data analysis tutorial. Results of the research will be incorporated into tools directly useful to policymakers, including informing the development of InVEST software, which describes how natural ecosystems support human health and welfare and is currently in use in over 180 countries.This project addresses three questions: (1) How does land use change affect the vector, host, and pathogen distributions and traits that drive disease transmission? (2) How important is land use change for vector-borne disease incidence observed at large scales in the field? (3) By what socioeconomic, behavioral, and ecological mechanisms does land use affect vector-borne disease transmission in the field? The hypothesis is that a dynamic gradient of land use intensification leads to a turnover in ecological suitability for transmission of different vector-borne diseases, resulting in succession from forest-based yellow fever and some forms of leishmaniasis, to malaria during early land conversion, to arboviruses transmitted by suburban and urban mosquitoes. The research will codify this hypothesis by developing trait-based epidemiological models of transmission for each of these focal diseases. Next, the research will test proposed relationships between environment and disease transmission using large-scale geospatial data on human disease, environment, and population in an econometrics statistical regression framework. Finally, the research will drill down into local transmission dynamics by surveying vector abundance, pathogen presence, human behavior, and socioeconomic conditions, combined with local-scale disease incidence data in situ in a field setting where land use is rapidly changing. Together, these approaches will identify and predict impacts of land use change on human disease.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.