Join us for the Baker Center Interdisciplinary Group on Energy and 
Environmental Policy - next presentation and discussion

Thursday, April 12, 2012 - 3:30-5:00 pm
Toyota Auditorium, Howard Baker Center
1640 Cumberland Avenue, UT Campus

Mercedes Pascual, U. Michigan
 
"Climate-driven infectious diseases in a changing human landscape: two case 
studies on cholera and malaria"

Water-borne and vector-borne infections are considered among infectious 
diseases to potentially be the most susceptible to climate variability.  This talk 
presents two case studies on the interaction of climate forcing with the 
population dynamics of such diseases; the first one on endemic cholera in 
Bangladesh, and the second one, on epidemic malaria in arid regions of 
northwest India.  These case studies illustrate: (1) the clear role played by 
climate variability as a major driver of the population dynamics of both 
diseases, strongly dictating the timing and size of large outbreaks, and (2) the 
increasing need to understand climate forcing in the context of changing human 
‘landscapes’ and the nonlinear feedbacks introduced by intervention.