Hi all,
A few days ago I asked for some help in finding work on ecosystem change
and human health. The response was wonderful and I'm posting the summary
back here. Thanks to all who replied.
Andy Cole
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there's some literature out there regarding the spatial and temporal
increase in Lyme disease in the US with the change from agricultural
landscapes to reforested ones during the last century+. The increase in
forested habitat has led to an increase in the abundance of hosts for
the tick vector for the disease (deer and white footed mice, primarily).
If this is of interest to you I can try to forward you some info, but
I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for.
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There's a journal called "Ecohealth" that may have articles relevant to
this.
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You might be interested in a recent EcoTone post entitled "Nutrient
enrichment linked to diseases in humans and wildlife"
(http://www.esa.org/esablog/research/nutrient-enrichment-linked-to-diseases-in-humans-and-wildlife/).
The citation at the bottom refers to the original study that has even
more information than what was listed in the post. Hope this helps and
best of luck in your search.
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how about this line of work?
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3148300
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In my non-majors Environmental Biology class we examine urbanization.
You may find some effects on human health if you take that route; for
example people from the most sprawling American cities weigh 6 lbs more
for their height than people from the least sprawling American cities
(2003 study, for which I do not have the reference). But that is
likely related to commuting. Another angle may be pollen allergies -
waste places probably harbor weedy species like ragweed that produce
highly allergenic pollen. High pollen loads are linked to increased
frequency of heart attack, etc. Especially in urban areas. It may
not be exactly what you are looking for, but it may be a way into the
literature... You might also consider checking out some environmental
science textbooks. They usually attempt to bridge the ecology - human
health divide. For example, Wright's Environmental Science has a
table (22-1) that lists environmental problems ranging from water and
air pollution to loss of biodiversity and the associated impacts on
health and productivity.
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I haven't read this, but just heard the author speak and thought it
might be in line with what you're looking for.
http://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Civilizations-David-R-Montgomery/dp/0520248708
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I went to a conference several years ago called Healthy Ecosystems,
Healthy People. It was in 2002 in Washington D.C. I'm not sure if any
publications came out of that conference, but it might be something to
look for.
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Sala, O.E., Meyerson, L.A., Parmesan, C. 2009. Biodiversity Change and
Human Health: From Ecosystem Services to Spread of Disease. Island Press.
Pain, A.K. 2008. Climate change and its effect on human health.
Icfai University Press
Aron, J.L., Patz, J.A. 2001. Ecosystem Change and Public Health: A
Global Perspective.
Johns Hopkins University Press
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The people working on EIDs suggest that increased habitat fragmentation
leads to more interaction between humans and wild animals, and then
increased transmission of zoonotic diseases.
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Bioeconomics of Invasive Species: Integrating Ecology, Economics, Policy
and Management
Editors: Reuben P. Keller, David M. Lodge, Mark A. Lewis, Jason F. Shogren
www.nd.edu/~rkeller2/BioEcon.html
<http://www.nd.edu/%7Erkeller2/BioEcon.html>
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Have you heard of "Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on
Biodiversity"? This book might not have exactly what you're looking
for, but it may contain useful references:
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/LifeSciences/Ecology/?view=usa&ci=9780195175097
<http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/LifeSciences/Ecology/?view=usa&ci=9780195175097>
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Laura Gabanski, at EPA's Office of Water is a guru on the relationship
between ecosystem services and human health/well being. I don't know of
any particular products to point you to, sorry, but hopefully Laura can
help you out. You can find her at:
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Lynne Westphal at the Forest Service and Frances Kuo at University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are also well-known in this field.
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You can access a paper online that relates changes in bird community
structure (mostly diversity) to human cases of West Nile fever. There
are other citations in the paper that might prove helpful.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002488
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I'd recommend getting in touch with Sam Myers who has given the subject
matter a lot of thought.
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I forwarded your question to a good friend of mine that is studying the
relationships between the environment and health. He is an Md. See his
response below.
This is basically what I'm working on but, to my knowledge, there are
no good studies to show this. There are a number of reasons for this
neglect, but the lack of an ecology of human health is probably the
biggest. So I'm trying to blend anthropology, evolutionary ecology,
complex systems, and medicine to come up with this ecological
framework. This would provide some causal mechanisms around which to
design an accurate epidemiological study.
Epidemiologists would use an cross-sectional aggregate study
(erroneously referred to as an ecological study) to show this
association, but the problem will then become identifying a consistent
human health data set spanning the relatively long periods of
ecosystem destruction. I think this can be done, but I have not had
the time to dive into it. As it stands now, there was one attempt at
such a study I know of , but the surrogates for human health were life
expectancy, infant mortality, and underweight infants. Since all
populations living in non-developed/non-industrialized regions are
marginalized in our globalized world, they suffer in these categories.
So industrialized nations with greater ecological disintegrity come
out ahead, and an inverse relationship between human health and
ecosystem health is demonstrated (see attached article).
Associations can be inferred, however, from looking at human health
over periods of socio-cultural evolution and civilization (assuming
anthropogenic environmental deterioration over this time). Mark
Nathan Cohen is the most notable proponent of this. Look up his books
Health and Rise of Civilization and Ancient Health. Also, if one uses
CO2e emissions as a surrogate for industrialization and ecological
deterioration, one can put together cross-sectional aggregate studies
on most nations which maintain health statistics and report emissions.
Attached is a graph I made for Cuba during their "special period",
though this influence moved through socio-cultural channels to
individual behavior more than through ecosystem restoration (though
this was also a consequence).
Some very well connected contacts are David Rapport (ecosystem health,
founder of the journal Ecohealth, [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>) and Eric
Chivian (psychiatrist leading medicine in addressing ecological
integrity.
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After a quick search for "green landscape human health" I found the
following article.
Hope this helps.
*Landscape and Urban Planning*
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01692046>
Volume 81, Issue 3
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_tockey=%23TOC%235885%232007%23999189996%23657888%23FLA%23&_cdi=5885&_pubType=J&view=c&_auth=y&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=b196729166c4df4911479b45e1e7c30e>,
20 June 2007, Pages 167-178
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Check out the work of Richard Ostfeld, Felicia Keesing and Kathleen
LoGiudice on the Dilution Effect. In their system, low diversity in
eastern forest mammalian communities is predicted to lead to greater
risk for human Lyme Disease.
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This may be more general than what you need, but there's a book called
"Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity" edited by Eric
Chivian and Aaron Bernstein (2008) that may be helpful. They're both
associated with the Center for Health and the Global Environment
(http://chge.med.harvard.edu/).
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You've probably been bombarded with citations, but I've got one more, it
discusses how sentinel species can be used as barometers of ecosystem
health.
Bossart, G. D. (2006). Marine mammals as sentinel species for oceans and
human health. /Oceanography/, /19/, 134-137
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you might also look into the field of psychology where there is research
on stress-environment interactions (I know that sensory overload common
in an urban environment increases androgen levels. And longterm elevated
androgen levels contribute to an array of health problems, like high
blood pressure and heart disease). Here's another related
post:http://www.esa.org/esablog/research/the-health-benefits-of-spending-time-in-the-great-outdoors/.
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The Wildlife Trust (www.wildlifetrust.org
<http://www.wildlifetrust.org>) has a lot of stuff on this, including a
book:
A. Alonso Aguirre, Richard S. Ostfeld, Gary M. Tabor, Carol House, Mary
C. Pearl. 2002.
Conservation Medicine: Ecological Health in Practice. OUP.
There is also a journal:http://www.ecohealth.net/
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