In This Issue

Excerpt

Frumkin and Watts start off our special feature on climate change identifying and describing the impact of three recent developments at the interface of climate change and health. Limaye et al. quantified heat-related excess mortality risks due to climate change across the eastern USA using the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program (BenMAP). Their findings suggest that currently available information on future climates is sufficient to protect public health in regional planning. Wollenberg Valero et al. provided a proof of concept for the idea that plant characteristics such as flowering, fruiting, and greening can be used in predicting Ebola spillover events in the African tropics. This may serve as a cost-effective method of locally monitoring spillover conditions. Martin et al. generated an ecological niche model of Hendra virus and its reservoir hosts to predict spillover risk. They estimate that the areas at risk may expand southward in response to climate change and that in northern regions there may be a gradual replacement of reservoir hosts. The authors call for enhanced prevention in the south and increased flying fox surveillance to confirm the predicted distributional patterns in response to climate change. In another study, Martin et al. examined the spatiotemporal patterns of bat-borne Hendra virus in horses with niche modeling-like techniques and fitted a consensus statistical model that corresponded to the observations. The model included climatic variables such as minimum temperature and rainfall. To examine potential consequences to humans and wildlife of the climate change-driven northward expansion of Culex erraticus, Fonseca et al. examined the host-feeding patterns of this mosquito in New Jersey. Their findings identified a new lineage for bird malaria parasites, likely representing a new species and specialist parasite of wetland birds. …