Predicting Disease Spread in Greater Yellowstone Ungulates Using Parasite DNA Markers

Infectious diseases are a serious threat to the viability of wildlife populations worldwide, including those in national parks and other protected areas where agricultural operations, development, and recreation are degrading and fragmenting habitat and increasing the potential for interactions between wildlife, domestic animals, and humans. The spread of infectious diseases and parasites is of particular concern in the greater Yellowstone area, which supports world-renowned herds of ungulates that provide significant visitor enjoyment and benefits to local economies through guiding and sport hunting. The high diversity, density, and co-mingling rates of ungulates in this area could facilitate the rapid emergence and spread of infectious diseases such as brucellosis, chronic wasting disease, and Johne's disease, with escalating disease threats to livestock and people along the public/private land interface.

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A Framework of an Integrated Livestock Vehicle Trajectory Database Using Digital Tachograph Data

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13052694 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (5) ◽

pp. 2694

Author(s):

Heehyeon Jeong ◽

Jungyeol Hong ◽

Dongjoo Park

Keyword(s):

Infectious Diseases ◽

African Swine Fever Virus ◽

African Swine Fever ◽

Disease Spread ◽

Transportation Engineering ◽

The Public ◽

Vehicle Trajectories ◽

History Of ◽

Vehicle Trajectory ◽

Livestock Diseases

The outbreak of African swine fever virus has raised global concerns regarding epidemic livestock diseases. Therefore, various studies have attempted to prevent and monitor epidemic livestock diseases. Most of them have emphasized that integrated studies between the public health and transportation engineering are essential to prevent the livestock disease spread. However, it has been difficult to obtain big data related to the mobility of livestock-related vehicles. Thus, it is challenging to conduct research that comprehensively considers cargo vehicles’ movement carrying livestock and the spread of livestock infectious diseases. This study developed the framework for integrating the digital tachograph data (DTG) and trucks’ visit history of livestock facility data. The DTG data include commercial trucks’ coordinate information, but it excludes actual livestock-related vehicle trajectories such as freight types and facility visit history. Therefore, the integrated database we developed can be used as a significant resource for preventing the spread of livestock epidemics by pre-monitoring livestock transport vehicles’ movements. In future studies, epidemiological research on infectious diseases and livestock species will be able to conduct through the derived integrating database. Furthermore, the indicators of the spread of infectious diseases could be suggested based on both microscopic and macroscopic roadway networks to manage livestock epidemics.

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Guidelines for management involving grizzly bears in the greater Yellowstone area : Bridger-Teton, Shoshone, Custer, Gallatin, Targhee National Forests, Grand Teton, Yellowstone National Parks.

10.5962/bhl.title.115837 ◽

1980 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

National Parks ◽

Grizzly Bears ◽

National Forests ◽

Greater Yellowstone Area ◽

Greater Yellowstone

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The case for tracking misinformation the way we track disease

Big Data & Society ◽

10.1177/20539517211013867 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 205395172110138

Author(s):

Erika Bonnevie ◽

Jennifer Sittig ◽

Joe Smyser

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Real Time ◽

Supervised Machine Learning ◽

Disease Spread ◽

The Public ◽

Monitoring Tools ◽

Core Function ◽

Public Health Organizations ◽

Front Line Workers ◽

Media Data

While public health organizations can detect disease spread, few can monitor and respond to real-time misinformation. Misinformation risks the public’s health, the credibility of institutions, and the safety of experts and front-line workers. Big Data, and specifically publicly available media data, can play a significant role in understanding and responding to misinformation. The Public Good Projects uses supervised machine learning to aggregate and code millions of conversations relating to vaccines and the COVID-19 pandemic broadly, in real-time. Public health researchers supervise this process daily, and provide insights to practitioners across a range of disciplines. Through this work, we have gleaned three lessons to address misinformation. (1) Sources of vaccine misinformation are known; there is a need to operationalize learnings and engage the pro-vaccination majority in debunking vaccine-related misinformation. (2) Existing systems can identify and track threats against health experts and institutions, which have been subject to unprecedented harassment. This supports their safety and helps prevent the further erosion of trust in public institutions. (3) Responses to misinformation should draw from cross-sector crisis management best practices and address coordination gaps. Real-time monitoring and addressing misinformation should be a core function of public health, and public health should be a core use case for data scientists developing monitoring tools. The tools to accomplish these tasks are available; it remains up to us to prioritize them.

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Picking Up Where the TMDL Leaves Off: Using the Partnership Wild and Scenic River Framework for Collaborative River Restoration

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13041878 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (4) ◽

pp. 1878

Author(s):

Alan R. Hunt ◽

Meiyin Wu ◽

Tsung-Ta David Hsu ◽

Nancy Roberts-Lawler ◽

Jessica Miller ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Water Quality ◽

Environmental Protection Agency ◽

Bacterial Contamination ◽

Resource Constraints ◽

Clean Water Act ◽

The United States ◽

Clean Water ◽

Private Land ◽

The Public ◽

Wild And Scenic Rivers

The National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act protects less than ¼ of a percent of the United States’ river miles, focusing on free-flowing rivers of good water quality with outstandingly remarkable values for recreation, scenery, and other unique river attributes. It predates the enactment of the Clean Water Act, yet includes a clear anti-degradation principle, that pollution should be reduced and eliminated on designated rivers, in cooperation with the federal Environmental Protection Agency and state pollution control agencies. However, the federal Clean Water Act lacks a clear management framework for implementing restoration activities to reduce non-point source pollution, of which bacterial contamination impacts nearly 40% of the Wild and Scenic Rivers. A case study of the Musconetcong River, in rural mountainous New Jersey, indicates that the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act can be utilized to mobilize and align non-governmental, governmental, philanthropic, and private land-owner resources for restoring river water quality. For example, coordinated restoration efforts on one tributary reduced bacterial contamination by 95%, surpassing the TMDL goal of a 93% reduction. Stakeholder interviews and focus groups indicated widespread knowledge and motivation to improve water quality, but resource constraints limited the scale and scope of restoration efforts. The authors postulate that the Partnership framework, enabled in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, facilitated neo-endogenous rural development through improving water quality for recreational usage, whereby bottom-up restoration activities were catalyzed via federal designation and resource provision. However, further efforts to address water quality via voluntary participatory frameworks were ultimately limited by the public sector’s inadequate funding and inaction with regard to water and wildlife resources in the public trust.

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Contemporary Plagues and Social Progress

PEDIATRICS ◽

10.1542/peds.66.3.458 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 66 (3) ◽

pp. 458-461

Author(s):

Thomas H. Weller

Keyword(s):

Infectious Disease ◽

Infectious Diseases ◽

Malignant Disease ◽

Diarrheal Disease ◽

Political Process ◽

Social Progress ◽

The Public ◽

National Congress ◽

Health Field ◽

Opening Session

For this address at the opening session of the First Mexican National Congress of Infectious Diseases in Children (ler, Congreso National de Infectologia Pediatrica), I have chosen as my title "Contemporary Plagues and Social Progress." While in medicine the term plague usually refers to diseases caused by Pasteurella pestis, the word has broader meanings and usages. It describes that which smites or troubles, can refer to an afflictive evil or anything troublesome or vexatious, or can be applied to any malignant disease, especially those that are contagious. It can be used as an expression of annoyance, as a mild oath, or with the implication of harassment. Thus, today we are concerned with the plague of plagues, the afflictive evils of the cumulative insults of infectious disease. Additionally, we might be tempted to cast a plague on the system of medical education and on the political process that neither conveys the continuing importance of infectious diseases nor funds the mechanisms for their containment. Or, should the shoe be on the other foot? Should not society cast a plague on us? As experts in the field of infectious disease, have we not failed to publicize that, on a global basis, the combination of diarrheal disease and malnutrition is the leading cause of death in infants and children? Has not our successful use of antibiotics induced unjustified public complacency regarding the problems of infectious disease? Why have our low-keyed reports of resistant typhoid bacilli, or pneumococci or of gonococci failed to dispel the prevalent mystique that science has controlled infectious agents, leaving cancer and heart disease in the public eye as the major unconquered problems in the health field?

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Cattle trade between and within biomes in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil

Pesquisa Veterinária Brasileira ◽

10.1590/1678-5150-pvb-5661 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 38 (11) ◽

pp. 2023-2028

Author(s):

Rísia L. Negreiros ◽

José H.H. Grisi-Filho ◽

Ricardo A. Dias ◽

Fernando Ferreira ◽

Valéria S.F. Homem ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Infectious Diseases ◽

Animal Movement ◽

Control Strategies ◽

The State ◽

Disease Spread ◽

Mato Grosso ◽

Movement Data ◽

Cattle Movements ◽

Increased Risk ◽

And Control

ABSTRACT: The analysis of animal movement patterns may help identify farm premises with a potentially high risk of infectious disease introduction. Farm herd sizes and bovine movement data from 2007 in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, were analyzed. There are three different biomes in Mato Grosso: the Amazon, Cerrado, and Pantanal. The analysis of the animal trade between and within biomes would enable characterization of the connections between the biomes and the intensity of the internal trade within each biome. We conducted the following analyses: 1) the concentration of cattle on farm premises in the state and in each biome, 2) the number and relative frequency of cattle moved between biomes, and 3) the most frequent purposes for cattle movements. Twenty percent (20%) of the farm premises had 81.15% of the herd population. Those premises may be important not only for the spread of infectious diseases, but also for the implementation of surveillance and control strategies. Most of the cattle movement was intrastate (97.1%), and internal movements within each biome were predominant (88.6%). A high percentage of movement from the Pantanal was to the Cerrado (48.6%), the biome that received the most cattle for slaughter, fattening and reproduction (62.4%, 56.8%, and 49.1% of all movements for slaughter, fattening, and reproduction, respectively). The primary purposes for cattle trade were fattening (43.5%), slaughter (31.5%), and reproduction (22.7%). Presumably, movements for slaughter has a low risk of disease spread. In contrast, movements for fattening and reproduction purposes (66.2% of all movements) may contribute to an increased risk of the spread of infectious diseases.

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Defining Sustainability in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

Journal of Sustainable Development ◽

10.5539/jsd.v11n1p32 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 32 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Ryan D. Bergstrom

Keyword(s):

National Parks ◽

Decision Makers ◽

Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem ◽

Community Stakeholders ◽

Gateway Communities ◽

Starting Point ◽

Greater Yellowstone ◽

Effective Decision Making ◽

Collective Resource ◽

Time In Residence

Because of the normative and subjective nature of the terms sustainability and sustainable development, solutions tend to be applicable for specific regions but not the whole of society. Thus, it is imperative understand better how community stakeholders and decision makers define the concept of sustainability. Not only will greater understanding of such definitions add to our understanding of nature-society relations, but also in certain contexts, this understanding may help to promote realistic and effective decision-making at local levels. The objective of this study was to determine how amenity-driven gateway communities surrounding Yellowstone and Grand Teton National parks define, conceptualize, and perceive sustainability, and if those perceptions varied between time in residence, community of origin, or role within the community. Thirty-five key informant interviews were conducted with decision makers within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to meet the study objectives. Throughout study communities, definitions of sustainability focused on the environment, the economy, and multi-generational thinking, and it is believed that these similarities can be the starting point for communication and collaboration among gateway communities, the long-term sustainability of their individual communities, and the collective resource upon which they all depend, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

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