CEID Guest Lecture: Interactive Effects of Climate and Land Use Change Transform the Landscape of Vector-borne Disease.

CEID core on EIDs, Climate Change, and One Health presents “Interactive effects of climate and land use change transform the landscape of vector-borne disease” co-sponsored by the SPH Center for Climate and Health.

Infectious diseases are rapidly emerging, shifting, and expanding into new areas. Humans are changing the environment at an unprecedented rate and scope. How are these phenomena connected? In this talk Dr. Mordecai presents research projecting the impacts of climate change on vector-borne diseases, ranging from malaria to dengue to West Nile to Zika, showing that climate change is expected to shift, rather than broadly expand, the geography and seasonality of these diseases. Additionally, she shows how land use change complements the impact of climate to drive distinct shifts in diseases like malaria, arboviruses, and leishmaniasis, depending on their ecological niche for transmission. Together, these projects illustrate that although anthropogenically driven changes in infectious diseases are complex and nonlinear, they are predictable using data-driven modeling approaches to identify mechanistic relationships and thresholds.

Additionally, Dr. Mordecai will be holding small group meetings with students and faculty throughout the day in Talbot 457W before and after her talk. Please sign up for a meeting time at the link below.

About Dr. Mordecai:

Erin Mordecai, PhD is an Associate Professor of Biology at Stanford University. Her research investigates how human impacts on the environment, such as climate change, deforestation, and species introductions and extinctions, affect the dynamics of infectious diseases in humans and wildlife. She is a faculty fellow in the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, King Center for Global Development, Woods Institute for the Environment, Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and Bio-X (member), and is an Ecological Society of America Early Career Fellow.