In addition to the events for Constitution Day, we hope you can join us for the next Baker 
Center Energy and Environmental Forum -- on Thursday, September 17, 2015 from 1:00-
2:30 pm in the Toyota Auditorium, Howard Baker Center, 1640 Cumberland Avenue, UT 
Campus

Colleen Jonsson, UT professor in NIMBioS, will present a talk on: 

Crossroads of Science, Society, Nature: Mbaracayú Biosphere Reserve, Paraguay

Like most nations in South America, Paraguay is faced with a number of environmental 
challenges. Both of its major biomes (Chaco, Interior Atlantic Forest) are currently 
undergoing rapid anthropogenic land cover change.  Much of this change stems from 
increasing internal economic and population pressure.  Since the implementation of 
democratic reforms in 1989, rapid social and economic changes have occurred in 
Paraguay.  These social changes are reflected in land use change, particularly 
deforestation and conversion of land from native cover to pasture and crop land. Here we 
examine the potential consequences of these landscape transformations for outbreaks of 
emerging pathogens and human health. We illustrate by focusing in particular on the area 
surrounding the Mbaracayú Biosphere Reserve, the largest remaining fragment and the 
largest protected area of the Interior Atlantic Forest ecoregion in Paraguay. In the 1990s, 
Paraguay experienced an outbreak of hantavirus, and hantaviruses have subsequently 
been shown to be endemic to the area. Land use changes impact the composition of the 
rodent community that carries hantaviruses, and we have found, for example, that 
rodents that have been exposed to hantaviruses occur in disproportionately high 
frequency in parts of the landscape transformed by human impacts. These results suggest 
important connections between land use patterns and the potential for future outbreaks of 
emerging pathogens.   
Join us - free and open to the public!