A Multidisciplinary One Health Approach to Mosquito Management

Large mosquito outbreaks mysteriously began to recur annually in Western Kentucky beginning in 2011. With up to 30 bites/minute in urban areas, these outbreaks warranted Governor-declared public health emergencies requiring expensive ($2 million each) aerial insecticide applications over 300,000 – 700,000 acres of populated area. The economic impact was also significant because the area, with large reservoirs managed by the TVA, is one of Kentucky’s most important tourist destinations. A multidisciplinary team investigated the cause of these outbreaks and determined that changes in reservoir management had led to lake water infiltrating a large and ancient underground gravel layer causing high surface soil saturation and creating large numbers of mosquito breeding sites. Skeptical TVA managers conducted an internal investigation and discovered long-forgotten surveillance data dating back to the 1940's that had also identified this effect. Reservoir management practices were changed to comport with our model and the outbreaks have not recurred.