The use of remote sensing for the ecological description of multi-host disease systems: a case study on West Nile virus in southern France.
A large number of diseases that affect humans and animals are influenced by environmental factors. For multi-host infectious diseases, various species might be involved in the transmission process and the circulation of the pathogenic agent might result from the occurrence of certain specific association(s) between host and vector species. The need to characterise multi-species assemblage requires the development of new methods to derive integrated environmental risk factors. We have given remote sensing an ecological application to study the potential distribution of West Nile virus (WNV) in the Rhone River delta in southern France. West Nile fever is a vector-borne disease transmitted in natural cycles between birds and mosquitoes. Satellite images were used to create an ecological map on land cover. Appropriate typology was employed for the description of both hosts and vectors distributions. A database including the probability of occurrence of bird and mosquito species in each landscape unit is linked to this ecological map. Spatial and temporal information on host and vector distribution is then integrated using geographic information systems. This integrative tool is designed to test some hypotheses on the epidemiological process of WNV and to identify environmental configurations and environmental changes likely to favour the emergence of WNV.
Tran
Annelise
A
Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour développement, Unité Epidémiologie et Ecologie des Maladies animales, Campus international de Baillarguet, 34398 Montpellier Cedex 5, France. annelise.tran@cirad.fr
Gaidet
Nicolas
N
L' Ambert
Grégory
G
Balenghien
Thomas
T
Balança
Gilles
G
Chevalier
Véronique
V
Soti
Valéria
V
Ivanes
Cécile
C
Etter
Eric
E
Schaffner
Francis
F
Baldet
Thierry
T
de la Rocque
Stéphane
S