Climate-Irrigation-Malaria in India

Picture1With an interdisciplinary team at the Department of Statistics at WVU and the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Eungul Lee and John Burkhart have investigated the links between climate, land use, and malaria diseases in India. The statistically significant relationships of climate and irrigation factors with malaria incidence suggest that increasing spring irrigation activity could increase malaria risk in arid western Rajasthan of the northwestern India [Lee et al., 2016b J. Arid Environments]. We also found that wetter and cooler climates related to warmer sea surface temperature in tropical western Pacific increase malaria incidence in the arid climate region.

 

Publications

Lee, E., J. Burkhart, S. H. Olson, A. A. Billings, E. J. Harner, and J. A. Patz (2016), Relationships of climate and irrigation factors with malaria parasite incidences in two climatologically dissimilar regions in India, J. Arid Environments, 124, 214-224. [Link]

Funding sources

WVU ECAS Applied Computational Sciences Innovation Awards (ACSIA) [2012-2013].