Cooperative Agreement for CESU-affiliated Partner with Great Lakes-Northern Forest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit

The USGS is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for research in providing a quantitative, objective approach to decision-making on control of infectious disease outbreaks. There are many factors underlying the increased potential for emergence of wildlife diseases that have the potential for spillover into human populations (Morse 1995, Daszak 2000). The pace of newly emerging and reemerging zoonotic diseases requires an ability to make predictions about the severity of a disease threat, and to rapidly identify mitigation strategies, which is difficult when managers lack basic information on pathogen characteristics and do not have trusted predictions of species susceptibility and the expected disease dynamics. Typically, action is delayed while these uncertainties are resolved (e.g., via surveillance or research).