Land Use Changes Will Increase Disease Outbreaks

According to scientific findings published recently, , land use changes caused by urbanization, agricultural expansion and other types of human activity could put humans at greater risk of infectious disease outbreaks. When land use changes disrupt ecosystems, research suggests species known to carry diseases that infect humans benefit from the disruptions. For the new study, scientists analysed data from 184 studies on 7,000 species, including 376 known to carry disease capable of infecting humans. Their analysis showed that as habitats are degraded, species that carry zoonotic diseases fare better than those that don't, either persisting or increasing in abundance. Researchers considered the possibility that species that either persist or thrive in human-dominated landscapes might simply have more opportunities to pass along pathogens to humans, while animals that don't may never get their chance to demonstrate their potential as carriers of zoonotic diseases. The findings add to the growing body of evidence that global land use changes are causing significant ecological damage, as well as fuelling climate change -- and in turn, increasing the risks to human health. The authors of the new study suggest land-management policy must account for the costs associated with land use changes. "We need to do further work to understand how we can best design landscapes to prevent future disease risk," David Redding, a researcher at the University College London's Center for Biodiversity said. "It might be that we need to share land with more intact ecological communities that are natural biological controls for disease-carrying species, such as predators."