A guest commentary by Shannon LaDeau, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and a Baltimore Ecosystem Study NSF LTER co-principal investigator and Paul Leisnham, an associate professor of ecology and health at the University of Maryland’s Department of Environmental Science and Technology. When it comes to addressing emerging infectious disease, we have a short attention span. Forces are…
Read MoreFiguring out the what, where and when of disease outbreaks By Nadine Lymn, ESA director of public affairs Plague, Lyme disease, Hantavirus, West Nile Virus—these bacteria and viruses are zoonotic diseases that can be transmitted to people from animals like ticks, mosquitoes and rodents and were the subject of a recent Ecological Society of America (ESA) congressional briefing. Disease transmission…
Read Moreby Liza Lester, ESA communications officer The pressures of global trade may heighten disease incidence by dictating changes in land use. A boom in disease-carrying ticks and chiggers has followed the abandonment of rice cultivation in Taiwanese paddies, say ecologist Chi-Chien Kuo and colleagues, demonstrating the potential for global commodities pricing to drive the spread of infections. Their work appears…
Read MoreThis post contributed by Terence Houston, ESA Science Policy Analyst A proposal to develop new marine coal export terminals in Oregon and Washington, which could ship between 75 million and 175 million tons of Powder River Basin coal annually to Asia, has drawn concern from environmentalists in the region. The National Wildlife Federation and the Association of Northwest Steelheaders have…
Overabundance of an essential nutrient is not always a good thing. – by Liza Lester, ESA communications officer. A tractor spreads manure. Excess fertilizer seeping out of fields has a host of consequences for ecological systems and human health. Credit, flickr user eutrophication&hypoxia, 2010. NITROGEN is both an essential nutrient and a pollutant, a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion…
This post contributed by Liza Lester, ESA communications officer No one speaks for the endangered poliomyelitis. No one raises money to protect the last survivors, as health workers stalk the virus through its last redoubts in India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan. On the contrary, the WHO spends billions on hunting it to extinction. But the virus has held out…
This post contributed by Lindsay Deel, a Ph.D. student in geography at West Virginia University and Intern with ESA’s journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment Infectious diseases won’t know what hit them. A massive new collaborative effort between funding sources in the United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) takes aim at infectious diseases from ecological and social perspectives,…
The practice of mountaintop removal mining has spurred a great deal of research and policy debate since January of this year, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) vetoed a federal permit for the 2,278 acre Spruce No. 1 mine in Logan County, West Virginia. The veto of the permit was EPA’s 13th use of its veto authority, granted under the…
The recent expansion of hydraulic fracturing across the nation has set off a debate among oil and gas industry officials and conservationists and environmental scientists. During a recent House Space, Science and Technology Committee hearing, Congressman John Sarbanes (D-MD) outlined the points of contention: “You have one group that’s got long experience with hydraulic fracturing [contending] it’s very safe” and…
International interest and investment in nanotechnology is growing—said panelists in this morning’s public forum in Washington, D.C. hosted by RTI International—and development and commercialization of this technology need to meet societal expectations. That is, explained moderator Jim Trainham of RTI, the public is concerned with understanding and controlling nanotechnology since, if it cannot be controlled, the technology is not considered…
Several Congressional hearings have been held this year on climate science and potential policy actions such as federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. There are those in Congress who argue that regardless of whether or not they are convinced that human activity is leading to changes in the atmosphere, the United States cannot afford to address it amidst a soaring…
A study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics revealed alarming findings: A link between children diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and traces of the breakdown of organophosphate pesticides in their urine. Pollutants like pesticides can have both direct and indirect effects on human and wildlife health as a result of changes in an ecosystem.