Atlas of Maine

Article Title

Identifying Lyme Disease Risk in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont

Authors

Isa Berzansky, Colby CollegeFollow
Keller C. Leet-Otley, Colby CollegeFollow

Abstract or Description

Lyme disease is a tick-borne zoonosis that infects upwards of 26,000 people annually, making it the most common vector-borne disease in the United States (CDC 2017). The etiologic agent of Lyme disease is Borrelia burgdorferi, which relies on the deer tick, Ixodes scapularis, to complete its complex life cycle (CDC 2015). An increasing global temperature may have implications for incidence of Lyme disease (Ogden 2014). We examined ecological and epidemiological factors that influence Ixodes scapularis to create a model of Lyme disease risk in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. We included the average number of days above freezing and average monthly precipitation in our model (Leighton 2012, McPherson et al. 2017).

About the Author

Isa Berzansky and Keller Leet-Otley are Environmental Science students at Colby College, Class of 2019.

Source Data Note

• NOAA
• CDC
• USGS NED
• National Land Cover Data

Rights

In Copyright

Recommended Citation

Berzansky, Isa and Leet-Otley, Keller C. "Identifying Lyme Disease Risk in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont," Atlas of Maine: Vol. 2018: No. 2, Article 2.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/atlas_docs/vol2018/iss2/2