GDRI Ecosystem Health and Environmental Disease Ecology

The GDRI Ecosystem health and environmental disease ecology (GDRI EHEDE) program (http://gdri-ehede.univ-fcomte.fr) was created in 2013. Supported by the French CNRS,  its objective is to promote exchanges and bring better legibility to collaborative research in Asia, Europe and North America, linking ecosystem health (e.g. the long-term sustainability of ecological processes and the integrity of ecosystem services) and disease ecology (e.g. the processes by which diseases can sustain or be controlled in a given ecosystem).

It is based on the principles of EcoHealth and aims to use the momentum that has been gained by fruitful cooperation between European and Asian researchers for more than 20 years to move ahead and develop conditions where researcher in conservation biology, population ecology, human and animal health can meet, develop their own research, exchange and cooperate in a multi-disciplinary framework. We consider it essential to develop parallel paths, bridges and sustainable long-term interactions between disciplines that can contribute to ecohealth studies. This program brings together researchers from Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom.

Main research issues:

• Ecology of Cestode transmission in Asia, Europe and North America. Cestode zoonoses (Echinococcoses, Taeniases, Cysticercoses) are neglected zoonotic diseases which are highly endemic in western China, Central Asia and Europe and there is indication of emergence (or increased awareness ?) of multilocularis in North America. The life-cycle of those diseases ranges from merely sylvatic to merely domestic and offers unique opportunities to understand, in a systems approach, how anthropogenic human disturbance of ecosystems leads to transmission re-enforcement, sustained stability or to extinction in various conditions.
• Wildlife ecology and ecosystem health. Here we focus on wildlife human conflicts such as those triggered by small mammal population surges (potentially resulting in increased parasite transmission) as a consequence of landscape and agricultural practice alterations, conservation of species such as the black and white snub-nosed monkey in a context of global warming and increasing agricultural encroachment in pristine high altitude forest habitats, management of increasing Asian elephant populations in Yunnan in a mosaic of forest and intensive agriculture.
• Permanent workshop on adaptive monitoring, data management and modelling. Environmental sciences and ecology depend increasingly on long-term monitoring of ecosystems. This is also the case for public health as well as for conservation issues where it is also crucial to record disease events, population dynamics and history for the long term and on multiple spatial and temporal scales. Here we share experience in long term multi-disciplinary study design and adaptive monitoring in the field of ecosystem health and environmental diseases ecology. The objective is to harness participants for organising adaptive monitoring programmes in complex systems and manage data on the long term. Moreover, The GDRI EHEDE focusing on integrated systemic approaches to health (ecosystem, animal, human) and their practical applications has a special concern about spatially explicit and multiscale modelling.

The GDRI EHEDE benefits from the infrastructures of ILTER-France, especially the Zone atelier Arc jurassien (http://zaaj.univ-fcomte.fr/?lang=en) and from collaborations with various partners in Western China and Yunnan (Public and Animal Health authorities, Forest services, National Parks, Reserves, etc.)

Members of the IAEH are warmly welcome to contact any member of the GDRI EHEDE for more information or collaboration:

• Members at http://gdri-ehede.univ-fcomte.fr/spip.php?article2
• Publications at http://gdri-ehede.univ-fcomte.fr/spip.php?article49

News and events are frequently updated on the GDRI EHEDE website http://gdri-ehede.univ-fcomte.fr

[author][author_info]Patrick Giraudoux – Professor of Ecology at the Chrono-environment department of the University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté/ CNRS and senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (https://chrono-environnement.univ-fcomte.fr/spip.php?article232&lang=en). He coordinates the Zone atelier Arc jurassien (http://zaaj.univ-fcomte.fr/?lang=en) and the GDRI Ecosystem Health and Environmental Disease Ecology (http://gdri-ehede.univ-fcomte.fr). He is the foreign director of the Wildlife Management and Ecosystem Health department at the Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, Kunming, China. He is a landscape ecologist working on small mammal population ecology, Echinococcus multilocularis transmission and conservation issues. His study fields are mostly mountainous areas of Europe and Western China.[/author_info] [/author] Joe Gilliam Authentic Jersey