COS 114-1 - CANCELLED - Modeling land use in eastern Ontario using Dyna-Clue to support mosquito-borne disease risk assessment

Background/Question/Methods

Up to 80 mosquito species are endemic in Canada, including species that can carry diseases such as West Nile virus. Mosquito presence, abundance, and spread are greatly influenced by climate and land use. Eastern Ontario is an example of a diversified mosquito community and a landscape marked by urbanization and intensive agriculture. Changes in mosquito species distribution or abundance have been modelled according to climate change without incorporating land-use changes. Our objective is to demonstrate the feasibility of developing land-use change simulations that are spatially distributed and relevant for the prediction of mosquito-borne disease risk in Canada. We projected land use evolution in eastern Ontario until 2070 using the Dyna-CLUE model based on historical land-use trends of four land-use classes (water, forest, cropland and urban) from 2014 to 2020 annual crop inventory maps. The projections follow 5 scenarios representing different urbanization degrees or agricultural expansion, with various natural areas’ protection levels. Consistency between observed data and simulations are checked by calculating a concordance matrix between simulated and observed data for 2020. Thirty simulations are run per scenario and then compared with an average layer created using majority analysis. One single simulation is selected per scenario as input for future modelling.

Results/Conclusions

The results have shown that the simulated maps were in good agreement with the validation map. This was confirmed through the statistical validation by map pair analysis (concordance matrix). By 2050, the most important changes occur mainly in both rural and forested areas in the south east of the study area. In 2070, high deforestation is expected to occur in the central west especially for the scenario that maintains the previous trend and the scenario that enable major increase in urban development and normal increases in agricultural development at expense of natural land. For more optimistic scenarios, future pattern of land use classes in the whole region has undergone little changes. These results will be integrated into risk models predicting the abundance of Culex pipiens-restuans ­– the main vector of the West Nile virus – and the biodiversity of mosquito populations. Scenarios that allow expansion of agricultural and urban areas of the study region may lead to an increased risk of exposure to mosquito-borne diseases for humans. This work will allow us to demonstrate the major impact of landscape changes, in synergy with climate change, on the risk of exposure to mosquito-borne diseases in Canada.