it's hard to believe but malaria still
claims over a million lives around the
globe every year
in fact more than half the world's
population lives in areas with active
malaria transmission and with no vaccine
the problem is getting worse
the disease is spread by certain types
of mosquitoes known in the scientific
world as anopheles
rice fields of which there are over 500
000 acres in california's sacramento
valley serve as ideal breeding grounds
for these insects
although malaria is not prevalent here
the mosquitoes are so it's a good study
site
using scanners aboard satellites and
aircraft such as the u2
scientists like byron wood at nasa's
ames research center are producing and
analyzing imagery of the valley which
might help make malaria control more
manageable
the black blocks here are flooded rice
fields before the plants have emerged
by looking at how the rice shown in red
develops in these fields wood and his
colleagues predict which are likely to
produce the most mosquitoes
information like this would help
organizations such as the sutter yuba
mosquito control district whose job it
is to limit populations of the insects
they now have to trudge through
thousands of acres of flooded rice
fields every year looking for mosquito
larvae
counting the tiny squiggly larvae makes
it possible to spray only in fields
where it's absolutely necessary an
important concern economically and
environmentally
but the counting process is so
labor-intensive it's virtually
impossible in parts of the world with
far more rice fields and wouldn't have
to be done at all if mosquito
concentrations could be determined from
a single image
under dr bob washington's direction
scientists from the university of
california davis work with the sutter
yuba district to check the accuracy of
nasa's imagery
in addition to counting larvae they
determine the ages of adult mosquitoes
in the area by removing and examining
female ovaries
there should be very few young adults
where low larvae counts were predicted
and so far nasa researchers have been
right 80 percent of the time
uc davis researchers are also working on
a fungus as an alternative to chemicals
currently used in mosquito control
this fungus produces spores that attack
only mosquito larvae nothing else in the
environment is affected and since it
continues to work in the fields months
and possibly years after a single
application it could prove more cost
effective as well
the task now is to get the fungus and
imaging techniques to countries that
need the most malaria control
bringing nasa technology university
expertise and public agency experience
to bear on a serious world health
problem