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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.