Genetics: A New Landscape for Medical Geography

Abstract

The emergence and reemergence of human pathogens resistant to medical treatment will present a challenge to the international public health community in the coming decades. Geography is uniquely positioned to examine the progressive evolution of pathogens across space and through time and to link molecular change to interactions between population and environmental drivers. Landscape as an organizing principle for the integration of natural and cultural forces has a long history in geography and, more specifically, in medical geography. Here, we explore the role of landscape in medical geography, the emergent field of landscape genetics, and the great potential that exists in the combination of these two disciplines. We argue that landscape genetics can enhance medical geographic studies of local-level disease environments with quantitative tests of how human-environment interactions influence pathogenic characteristics. In turn, such analyses can expand theories of disease diffusion to the molecular scale and distinguish the important factors in ecologies of disease that drive genetic change of pathogens. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.