by Ana Marquez Pereda, Meifang Li, and Xun Shi
Department of Geography, Dartmouth College

Abstract

In this study, we examined how Lyme Disease varies with certain environmental factors in New Hampshire. On the Lyme Disease side, we used the data published by the NH Department of Health and Human Service (DHHS), which is town-level age-adjusted rate data for two 5-year periods: 2004-2009 and 2010-2014. On the environmental side, we considered two factors: landscape fragmentation and surface temperature. The landscape fragmentation was measured based on the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) National Land Coverage Dataset (NLCD) and the metrics were calculated using the FRAGSTATS software. The surface temperature data are from the USGS Landsat 8-9 Collection 2 (C2) Level 2 Science Product (L2SP). Using ArcGIS, we processed the environmental raster layers into the usable form: mosaic multiple parts into an integrated layer, clipped them to the NH spatial extent, and converted them into the NH State Plane coordinate system. We then calculated the zonal statics of those environmental values using the town polygons. Finally, we calculated the correlation coefficient and linear regression between LD and the environmental factors. It appears that LD has spatial associations with some landscape fragmentation metrics and the surface temperature in New Hampshire.

The full Slide (Poster) is here.