Jardine Andrew, Cook Angus, Weinstein Philip
School of Population Health, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia.
J Environ Monit. 2008 Dec;10(12):1409-14. doi: 10.1039/b806520a. Epub 2008 Oct 1.
The intrinsic link between ecosystem health and human health has been firmly established in the literature and has given rise to the development of new multidisciplinary fields of research such as medical geology. An important practical implication of the ecosystem health approach is the utility of human disease outbreaks as indicators of underlying ecosystem disruption. The use of such a bioindicator is particularly relevant in developing countries where monitoring of traditional environmental and ecological indicators is not routinely undertaken. Mosquito-borne diseases appear to have good potential as bioindicators in tropical regions because the burden of disease is high, the disease ecology has a strong environmental component and intensive surveillance systems are well established. Evidence is reviewed regarding the utility of mosquito-borne disease to detect a range of ecosystem insults including: hydro-geological disruption in soil-water systems (e.g. secondary soil salinisation and waterlogging); escalating agricultural intensification; deforestation; and urbanisation. The evidence suggests that overall, mosquito-borne disease is a specific but insensitive indicator, because human modification of natural ecosystems does not always result in increases in disease incidence and can, in some cases, lead to reductions. Nevertheless, mosquito-borne disease remain useful as bioindicators if utilised as a complement to traditional environmental variables in identifying ecological disturbances; they can then assist in directing interventions that are concurrently beneficial to both human health and ecosystem health.
生态系统健康与人类健康之间的内在联系已在文献中得到确凿证实，并催生了医学地质学等新的多学科研究领域的发展。生态系统健康方法的一个重要实际意义在于，将人类疾病暴发用作潜在生态系统破坏的指标。在发展中国家，这种生物指标的应用尤为相关，因为这些国家通常不会定期监测传统的环境和生态指标。在热带地区，蚊媒疾病似乎具有作为生物指标的良好潜力，因为疾病负担高，疾病生态学具有很强的环境因素，而且建立了完善的强化监测系统。本文回顾了有关蚊媒疾病用于检测一系列生态系统损害的效用的证据，这些损害包括：土壤 - 水系统中的水文地质破坏（如次生土壤盐渍化和涝渍）；农业集约化程度不断提高；森林砍伐；以及城市化。证据表明，总体而言，蚊媒疾病是一个特定但不敏感的指标，因为人类对自然生态系统的改变并不总是导致疾病发病率上升，在某些情况下反而会导致发病率下降。然而，如果将蚊媒疾病用作识别生态干扰时传统环境变量的补充，那么它仍然可以作为生物指标发挥作用；这样一来，它就能帮助指导那些对人类健康和生态系统健康都有益的干预措施。
