2017/10/24 by Jesús Olivero, Julia E. Fa, Raimundo Real +11 · 228 citations
Medicine · #Viral Infections and Outbreaks Research #Zoonotic diseases and public health #Viral Infections and Vectors #Outbreak #Ebola virus #Biome #Deforestation (computer science) #Rainforest #Geography #Virology #Ecology #Medicine #Biology #Ecosystem
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41598-017-14727-9
published in Scientific Reports 7(1), 14291 (Nature Portfolio)
openalex publication_date 2017/10/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/08
Ebola virus disease (EVD) is a contagious, severe and often lethal form of hemorrhagic fever in humans. The association of EVD outbreaks with forest clearance has been suggested previously but many aspects remained uncharacterized. We used remote sensing techniques to investigate the association between deforestation in time and space, with EVD outbreaks in Central and West Africa. Favorability modeling, centered on 27 EVD outbreak sites and 280 comparable control sites, revealed that outbreaks located along the limits of the rainforest biome were significantly associated with forest losses within the previous 2 years. This association was strongest for closed forests (>83%), both intact and disturbed, of a range of tree heights (5->19 m). Our results suggest that the increased probability of an EVD outbreak occurring in a site is linked to recent deforestation events, and that preventing the loss of forests could reduce the likelihood of future outbreaks.