Climate Changes Impacts on Fire Regimes, Plant Invasions, and Tick-Borne Diseases
Abstract
Tick-borne diseases (TBDs) represent a major public health threat in North America, particularly for military personnel training on Department of Defense (DoD) installations. Ecological theory predicts that climate change will likely alter vector-borne disease transmission by a variety of direct and indirect pathways. This project explored several of the predicted consequences of climate change, including interactions with wildlife, for human risk of ng altered fire regimes and plant communities and their exposure to TBDs in the southeastern United States (U.S.). Project-specific objectives were to: 1) Evaluate the interactions between fire and plant invasions spanning a gradient in fire management, invasive plant distribution and abundance, and climatic conditions across the southeastern U.S. 2) Quantify the effects of fire and plant invasions, and their interactions, for variation in wildlife abundance, tick abundance, tick infection rates, and TBD risk to humans. 3) Calibrate a spatially explicit model of TBD risk in response to fire-invasion interactions and incorporate simulations of climate change scenarios. Benefits of this project to the Department of Defense include an improved understanding of current TBD risk on installations and of the potential consequences of climate change for TBD risk and human health.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 29, 2021
- Accession Number
- AD1189866
Entities
People
- Allison Gardner
- Brian F. Allan
- Drew Hiatt
- Luke Flory
- Michael Dietze
- Page Fredericks
- Tempest Mccabe
- Whalen Dillion
Organizations
- Boston University
- University of Florida
- University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign
- University of Maine