Promoting Ecohealth through Geography and Governmental Partnerships

Excerpt

Ecohealth is truly interdisciplinary and now includes the relatively new field of exposure science. In 2012, the National Research Council released Exposure Science in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy, in which application of geospatial knowledge and technology such as remote sensing, global positioning systems (GPS), and geographic information systems (GIS) are highlighted as means of facilitating Ecohealth research. Remote sensing provides global coverage of the earth’s land, water, and atmosphere, and is especially useful for estimating exposure in information-poor and inaccessible regions. GPS has been used in exposure assessments, for it gives accurate information on locations of an individual or species, which helps provide precise estimates of exposure. GIS allows integration of data from different geographic sources, providing quantitative information on the topologic relationship between an exposure source and a receptor, and enables vivid geo-visualization to support Ecohealth decision-making processes. Because the National Research Council stressed the importance of geography for Ecohealth applications needed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), this intersection of exposure science and geography provides a golden opportunity for geography students to participate in cutting-edge ecological and human health research. …