Estrada-Peña Agustin, Venzal José M
Department of Parasitology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain.
Geospat Health. 2007 May;1(2):157-68. doi: 10.4081/gh.2007.264.
A framework to evaluate the impact of ticks on human health under various scenarios of climate change is proposed. The purpose is not to provide a comprehensive plan (e.g. the economic impact of ticks on human society is not included), instead we wish to describe a series of indices that would be helpful by obtaining homogeneous comparisons of impact and vulnerability exerted by ticks in different regions, countries or continents, using normalized sets of population, vegetation, climate and physical attributes of the territory. Three tick species, i.e. Dermacentor marginatus, Rhipicephalus turanicus and Hyalomma marginatum, have been traced over the territory of Spain to further explain the computation of these indices. The discussion is based on tick habitat suitability, used as a measure of the abiotic (climate) fitness of the habitat for the species in question, and the sensitivity of each tick species to the rate of change of habitat suitability with respect to climate change. The impact is the rate of change in habitat suitability weighted with a fuzzy logic function evaluating the total number of people in an area, percent of rural population and accessibility of the geographical divisions (expressed as hexagons with a 10 km radius) used in the study. The different climate scenarios evaluated in relation to ticks show that the north-western part of Spain would suffer the greatest impact in case the mean temperature would increase, while the Mediterranean region would suffer the highest impact if temperatures decreased. Vulnerability, based on the sanitary structure of the territory and on the impact on human activities due to the change in tick distribution and abundance, is proposed as a measure of adaptation of society to these climate scenarios. The cost is evaluated as a function of land use and tick habitat suitability in a buffer zone surrounding each geographic division. All indices proposed have been obtained by search of common and/or publicly available data sets.
本文提出了一个用于评估在各种气候变化情景下蜱虫对人类健康影响的框架。其目的并非提供一个全面的计划（例如，不包括蜱虫对人类社会的经济影响），相反，我们希望描述一系列指标，这些指标将有助于通过使用该地区标准化的人口、植被、气候和地理属性集，对不同地区、国家或大陆的蜱虫所产生的影响和脆弱性进行同质化比较。在西班牙境内追踪了三种蜱虫，即边缘革蜱、图兰扇头蜱和边缘璃眼蜱，以进一步解释这些指标的计算方法。讨论基于蜱虫栖息地适宜性，它被用作衡量栖息地对相关物种的非生物（气候）适宜度，以及每种蜱虫对栖息地适宜性随气候变化的变化率的敏感性。影响是栖息地适宜性的变化率，通过一个模糊逻辑函数加权，该函数评估研究中使用的区域内的总人口数、农村人口百分比以及地理区域（表示为半径10公里的六边形）的可达性。与蜱虫相关的不同气候情景评估表明，如果平均气温升高，西班牙西北部将遭受最大影响，而如果气温下降，地中海地区将遭受最高影响。基于该地区的卫生结构以及蜱虫分布和数量变化对人类活动的影响，提出了脆弱性作为衡量社会对这些气候情景适应能力的指标。成本是根据每个地理区域周围缓冲区的土地利用和蜱虫栖息地适宜性来评估的。所有提出的指标均通过搜索通用和/或公开可用的数据集获得。
