Testing a mobile post

Hello everyone. Given the mobile nature of much of our work in SEER Lab, I am larning to blog from my mobile. This is a test post. I use a mobile phone running Windows Mobile 6.1 and even have a GPS and ArcPad loaded so mobile blogging falls in perfectly with my approach to travel and travel gadgets. The photo quality was poor, so I removed it, but the mobile approach does allow photo additions.

Working in Big Sky country

The trip to Bozeman was quick and we had a great deal of work to accomplish. In addition to field sampling four bull elk and a deer, we also had several meetings to discuss outbreak control strategies and discuss future steps on disease control and surveillance. It was a very successful trip.  Additionally, I was also able to introduce my Geography 327: Geography of Health to disease sampling and field work via my webcam on cell phone.  I also taught my Geography 485: GIS for Public Health class via a webcam and an online slide show of field sampling.  The photos here show how class was taught from the back of a truck, sampling a dead elk, mapping out case locations with a Trimble PDA running ArcPad, and some live bison on the range.  There is more information on the outbreak at promed mail archive number 20080802.2366 if you are interested.

Outbreak investigations are always interesting.  They are a combination of field work (like ecology, biology, pathology, and epidemiology) and working group meetings.  Field research on outbreaks is used in a number of ways. In the SEER Lab, these data are used to expand our knowledge of the ecology of disease - or how it works across spatial scales.  Spatial data will be used to improve my ecological niche models defining disease distribution and aim to improve those models. We use those to inform regions or states of potential areas where outbreaks might be more likely than others.  We also use field data to better understand the distribution of cases and aim to determine how outbreaks start, perpetuate, and eventually end.  Working group meetings are where stakeholders share knowledge, concerns, and ideas of how to better manage wildlife and livestock in disease areas, prepare for future outbreaks, and determine best courses of action or policy to insure domestic and wild herd health along with human public health in the event of future outbreaks.

The outbreak visited in south Texas back in July/August (see earlier SEER Lab Travel Log blog entries) was only in domestic cattle and was a much smaller number (though it is likely there were some deer affected).  The goal of SEER Lab is to understand the biogeographic similarities and differences in environment, possible vectors (e.g. flies), wildlife species, and herd management that serve as driving mechanisms for outbreaks in different regions from south Texas to the northern states and Canada, and across Central Asia.

Big Sky...

I am back on the road again. This week I am in Bozeman, MT investigating a large outbreak in wildlife. I am here through the end of the week working with a local wildlife veterinarian and his colleagues. Today I arrived in Bozeman around 415 pm. I was supposed to get in at noon, but a mechanical problem kept us grounded in the OC long enough to miss my connection in Salt Lake City, UT. I had to spend about 3 1/2 hours in UT, but used the time to get caught up on some lecture notes (yes... school is back in session too) and some writing. In addition to the field work we have been doing this summer, I am in the final throws of a paper for a NATO Science for Peace and Security conference that I attended in Tbilisi, Georgia earlier in the summer. I have been developing models of how disease distributions might differ from the present day in the year 2050, using some data from the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change and ecological niche modeling.

Upon arriving, the wildlife veterinarian was very helpful and quick to share details of the situation. I was given a series of maps and some environmental data on the ranch we will be visiting and we were able to compare this to some of the ecological niche modeling I have done in the past for the U.S.

The photos here show some of the gear I am preparing for tomorrow's field investigation and some of the documentation we have been reviewing this evening, and a view of the "Big Sky".