Fish and Wildlife Disease Investigation and Surveillance

Understanding disease systems requires an understanding of the basic ecology of host species. USGS is involved in global efforts to explore the movements of bird species that are hosts of avian influenza as well as the potential impacts of changing landscapes on avian influenza.

USGS researchers are collaborating with partners around the globe to leverage new and existing telemetry data to answer broad scale questions about factors influencing avian movement and migration.

USGS researchers are at the forefront of building and maintaining datasets that represent the spatial and temporal patterns in avian influenza virus prevalence in wild birds, which is critical information used to estimate transmission risk to domestic poultry.

USGS is creating spatially and temporally explicit inputs to improve avian influenza transmission risk modeling. This project places special emphasis on wild bird distribution and abundance models as well as avian influenza prevalence models.

USGS researchers are developing novel methods to improve our understanding of waterfowl distributions and abundance across the United States to inform a variety of ongoing disease studies. Understanding the distribution of wild waterfowl is a critical component to assessing avian influenza transmission risks across the landscape.

Recent outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza have impacted a dramatically wider range of bird hosts than ever before. USGS researchers are working to identify which bird species have been exposed, which have developed immune responses, and how these species may influence viral ecology to inform risk management activities.

USGS researchers are using telemetry to improve our understanding of how wild birds move throughout their environments and the potential implications for disease transmission within and to domestic poultry.

Low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) viruses naturally occur in wild birds and are rarely fatal. Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses are highly contagious, spread rapidly, are often fatal to poultry, and have been responsible for worldwide outbreaks. Together, LPAI and HPAI are generally referred to as either avian influenza viruses (AIVs) or "the bird flu."

This project focuses on improving our understanding of how current and previous infection with avian influenza viruses impact the movement ecology of wild bird species.

About the Research The Functional and Molecular Bioassay Core Technology Team (CTT) as part of the Environmental Health Program utilizes reporter assays, quantitative gene expression analyses, and high-throughput sequencing methods to produce functional endpoints across a broad scope of environmental topics and sample matrices.

The Aquatic Disease and Pathogen Repository (AquaDePTH) will be a public-facing national repository to support biosurveillance of aquatic animal diseases and pathogens. By collating historically published data, plus new aquatic pathogen and disease information, stakeholders will be able monitor fish kill and aquatic pathogen trends spatially and temporally in freshwater and marine environments...

The U.S. Geological Survey’s Eastern Ecological Science Center is home to the Northeast Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (NEARMI), one of 7 ARMI regions across the United States. NEARMI works on public lands in thirteen states from Maine to Virginia, including many National Parks and National Wildlife Refuges.