Geology topics

Mary I. O’Connor

Publications and source records attributed to Mary I. O’Connor.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2024

Temperature impacts on dengue incidence are nonlinear and mediated by climatic and socioeconomic factors: A meta-analysis

Temperature can influence mosquito-borne diseases like dengue. These effects are expected to vary geographically and over time in both magnitude and direction and may interact with other environmental variables, making it difficult to anticipate changes in response to climate change. Here, we investigate global variation in temperature–dengue relationship by analyzing published correlations between temperature and dengue and matching them with remotely sensed climatic and socioeconomic data. We found that the correlation between temperature and dengue was most positive at intermediate (near 24°C) temperatures, as predicted from an independent mechanistic model. Positive temperature–dengue associations were strongest when temperature variation and population density were high and decreased with infection burden and rainfall mean and variation, suggesting alternative limiting factors on transmission. Our results show that while climate effects on diseases are context-dependent they are also predictable from the thermal biology of transmission and its environmental and social mediators.

PLOS Climate↗

USGS2022

Expert perspectives on global biodiversity loss and its drivers and impacts on people

Despite substantial progress in understanding global biodiversity loss, major taxonomic and geographic knowledge gaps remain. Decision makers often rely on expert judgement to fill knowledge gaps, but are rarely able to engage with sufficiently large and diverse groups of specialists. To improve understanding of the perspectives of thousands of biodiversity experts worldwide, we conducted a survey and asked experts to focus on the taxa and freshwater, terrestrial, or marine ecosystem with which they are most familiar. We found several points of overwhelming consensus (for instance, multiple drivers of biodiversity loss interact synergistically) and important demographic and geographic differences in specialists’ perspectives and estimates. Experts from groups that are underrepresented in biodiversity science, including women and those from the Global South, recommended different priorities for conservation solutions, with less emphasis on acquiring new protected areas, and provided higher estimates of biodiversity loss and its impacts. This may in part be because they disproportionately study the most highly threatened taxa and habitats.

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment↗