Recorded presentation

Jonathan Patz, MD, MPH, Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1710 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53726, 608-262-4775, patz@wisc.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. In addition, many health outcomes are sensitive to global climate change. Examples include: heat-related mortality or morbidity; air pollution-related illnesses; infectious diseases, particularly those indirected transmitted via water (waterborne) and by insect or rodent vectors (vectorborne); and refugee health type issues linked to forced population migration. The conversion of natural landscapes and climate happens in both an incremental and a wholesale fashion. The agents of landscape and climate change are working in concert to alter patterns of disease exchange and transmission that affect healthy communities at the global scale.

Learning Objectives:

• To have students learn about several case studies that show the linkage between global climate and ecological change, with that of disease emergence and reemergence.

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.

Recorded presentation