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!
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