Costa Rica: Agriculture & dengue
Landscapes of Risk: Mosquitos, Dengue, and Land Use in Costa Rica
Dengue fever is endemic in rural Costa Rica, but most mosquito control strategies are designed for urban settings. In rural landscapes, landscape cover, climate, household infrastructure, and human behavior may all shape where Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus dengue-vector mosquitoes thrive and where dengue transmission risk is highest. Understanding these drivers is critical for designing sustainable, targeted interventions.
In collaboration with the University of Costa Rica and the Costa Rican Ministry of Health, DECO is combining modeling and field ecology to better understand and respond to rural dengue risk. DECO’s Costa Rica program now includes three closely linked project components.
First, the team is using dengue surveillance, climate, and remote sensing data to model how environmental change is shaping dengue risk across Costa Rica, with a focus on where transmission may expand under climate change and which control interventions are likely to work best under different conditions. This modeling work is being connected to a dengue dashboard and data system developed with the Ministry of Health, so that findings can be translated into practical tools for decision-making.
Second, DECO is conducting field studies to understand the ecology of rural dengue transmission. The team is now collecting mosquito, microclimate, household survey, and biodiversity data in rural landscapes to understand how land use, local temperature, housing conditions, human behavior, and ecological context affect Aedes mosquito presence and abundance.
Third, in collaboration with the Rosser lab, the program is using drones and AI to identify potential mosquito breeding habitats, such as tires and trash to predict mosquito risk on the ground.
Watch why Stanford scientists believe climate change is expanding range of disease-carrying mosquitos:
Team
Erin Mordecai, Rodolfo Dirzo, Caroline Glidden, Emma Krasovich Southworth, Adriana Troyo, Diana Rojas, Isaac Vargas, Elena Rodriguez
Partners
