Research Page
Rift Valley Fever in South Africa
The objective of this project is to collect essential data for Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) epidemiology and ecology that has been neglected by the significant amount of research previously conducted on the virus.
This will be accomplished through a mechanistic understanding of the relationship between mosquito abundance and succession, rainfall and satellite derived vegetation indices, wild and domestic ruminant immunity to the virus at multiple scales and in multiple species and a better understanding of the patterns of human infection with RVFV in South Africa. This research also provides the critical data needed to better predict the spread of the virus should it ever be introduced into the United States.
The project is led by EcoHealth Alliance in collaboration with South Africa’s Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Disease National Institute for Communicable Diseases (CEZD-NICD) and the NASA GSFC GIMMS Group. The GIMMS Group is providing project data support and analysis of a various remotely sensed data sets including 10day and monthly normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) time series (AVHRR, MODIS), daily rainfall from NOAA-CPC Africa Rainfall Climatology data set, and land surface temperature.
The data sets will help in determining the gross ecological and climatic/weather drivers of the emergence and propagation of RVF vectors.
Areas of Investigation
Assaf Anyamba
1. Ecologically Coupled Diseases
(Rift Valley fever: https://www.ars.usda.gov/southeast-area/gainesville-fl/center-for-medical-agricultural-and-veterinary-entomology/docs/rvf_monthlyupdates/)
2. Ecologically Coupled Diseases
(Dengue and Chikungunya: https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/bio/research/ecologically-coupled-diseases)
3. Global Agricultural Monitoring and Vegetation Index Time Series Analysis
https://glam1.gsfc.nasa.gov/)
Richard Damoah:
1. Ecologically Coupled Diseases
(Rift Valley fever, Dengue and Chikungunya: https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/bio/research/ecologically-coupled-diseases)
2. IDS-Biomass Burning in Northern Sub-Saharan Africa
http://feer.gsfc.nasa.gov/projects/nssa/about.php
3. AERONET site ANUC Ghana
https://aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/type_one_station_opera_v2_new?site=Koforidua_ANUC&nachal=2&level=1
This will be accomplished through a mechanistic understanding of the relationship between mosquito abundance and succession, rainfall and satellite derived vegetation indices, wild and domestic ruminant immunity to the virus at multiple scales and in multiple species and a better understanding of the patterns of human infection with RVFV in South Africa. This research also provides the critical data needed to better predict the spread of the virus should it ever be introduced into the United States.
The project is led by EcoHealth Alliance in collaboration with South Africa’s Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Disease National Institute for Communicable Diseases (CEZD-NICD) and the NASA GSFC GIMMS Group. The GIMMS Group is providing project data support and analysis of a various remotely sensed data sets including 10day and monthly normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) time series (AVHRR, MODIS), daily rainfall from NOAA-CPC Africa Rainfall Climatology data set, and land surface temperature.
The data sets will help in determining the gross ecological and climatic/weather drivers of the emergence and propagation of RVF vectors.
Areas of Investigation
Assaf Anyamba
1. Ecologically Coupled Diseases
(Rift Valley fever: https://www.ars.usda.gov/southeast-area/gainesville-fl/center-for-medical-agricultural-and-veterinary-entomology/docs/rvf_monthlyupdates/)
2. Ecologically Coupled Diseases
(Dengue and Chikungunya: https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/bio/research/ecologically-coupled-diseases)
3. Global Agricultural Monitoring and Vegetation Index Time Series Analysis
https://glam1.gsfc.nasa.gov/)
Richard Damoah:
1. Ecologically Coupled Diseases
(Rift Valley fever, Dengue and Chikungunya: https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/bio/research/ecologically-coupled-diseases)
2. IDS-Biomass Burning in Northern Sub-Saharan Africa
http://feer.gsfc.nasa.gov/projects/nssa/about.php
3. AERONET site ANUC Ghana
https://aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/type_one_station_opera_v2_new?site=Koforidua_ANUC&nachal=2&level=1
