Effect of Land-Use Change on the Changes in Human Lyme Risk in the United States

Yuying Ma, Ge He, Ruonan Yang, Yingying X. G. Wang, Zheng Y. X. Huang and Yuting Dong
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Yuying Ma: College of Life Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China
Ge He: China Academy of Urban Planning and Design Shenzhen, Shenzhen 518040, China
Ruonan Yang: College of Life Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China
Yingying X. G. Wang: Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä, FI-40014 Jyvaskyla, Finland
Zheng Y. X. Huang: College of Life Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China
Yuting Dong: Department of Terrestrial Ecology & Animal Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 10, 1-11

Abstract: The spatial extent and incidence of Lyme disease is increasing in the United States, particularly in the Upper Midwest and Northeast. Many previous studies have explored the drivers of its spatial pattern, however, few studies tried to explore the drivers for the changes of Lyme disease. We here compared the spatial patterns of changes of human Lyme cases and incidence in the Northeast and Upper Midwest between 2003–2005 and 2015–2017, and applied two different approaches (i.e., a statistical regularization approach and model averaging) to investigate the climatic and landscape factors affecting the risk change between the two periods. Our results suggested that changes in land-use variables generally showed different relationships with changes of human Lyme risk between the two regions. Changes of variables related to human-use areas showed opposite correlations in two regions. Besides, forest area and forest edge density generally negatively correlated with the change of human Lyme risk. In the context of ongoing habitat change, we consider this study may provide new insight into understanding the responses of human Lyme disease to these changes, and contribute to a better prediction in the future.

Keywords: Lyme disease; Borrelia burgdorferi; landscape factors; climatic factors; risk change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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