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Jonathan A Patz, MD, MPH, Environmental Health Sciences, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21205, 410-955-4195, jpatz@jhsph.edu
Landscape ecological integrity is a critical element in the maintenance of ecosystem services and biodiversity that sustains life. Embedded within healthy intact landscapes is the earth’s resilient capacity to adapt to environmental perturbations (whether they be natural or anthropogenic). Evidence is building on the adverse effects that land cover disruption can have on human and wildlife health. Every environmental perturbation impacts the ecological balance and context within which disease manifests itself within populations. These changes affect the hosts or vectors of disease and the pathogens and parasites that breed, develop, and transmit disease. Landscape impacts such as deforestation, human settlement sprawl, industrial development, road construction (e.g., linear disturbances), large water control projects (e.g., dams, canals, irrigation systems, reservoirs), and climate change have been accompanied by the spread of pathogens into new areas. For example, the competence of different anopheline mosquitoes to transmit malaria varies between species, and anopheline species occupy a variety of ecological niches. The conversion of natural landscapes happens in both an incremental and a wholesale fashion. A global pattern of landscape fragmentation has emerged. The agents of landscape change are working in concert to alter patterns of disease exchange and transmission that affect healthy communities of people and other creatures on our planet. The environmental impact of landscape changes on health is just now gaining attention in the public health and conservation worlds.
Learning Objectives:
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.