SCAPES: Scaling Lassa virus dynamics within anthropogenic ecosystems in Nigeria

Project overview

The SCAPES project is a cross-scale study of Lassa fever, a rodent-borne hemorrhagic fever of public health significance in West Africa and a global health priority.

The project will integrate fine-scale quantitative and participatory modelling approaches into broad-scale risk models to identify the patterns and processes that drive spillover within human-driven ecosystems.

Our aims

The goal of the study is to contribute to the long-term reduction of Lassa Fever burden in West Africa. We will do this by advancing our knowledge on the complex dynamics of Lassa mammarenavirus (LASV) spillover within human-modified ecosystems in West Africa, isolating specific locations where spillover is most likely to occur, and developing improved tools for forecasting zoonotic spillover. Specifically, the project has three major aims:

1. Describe the interrelated dynamics of landscapes, humans, rodents and LASV virus via parallel field studies across sites spanning a gradient of predicted Lassa risk.

2. Identify spatiotemporal dynamics of human-rodent-LASV overlap and interactions that give rise to ‘hotspots’ of viral transmission risk and offer opportunities for disease control via pattern, process, and participatory-based models.

3. Forecast risk of Lassa fever at larger spatial scales by integrating local-scale socio-ecological data into broad-scale risk models that can act to abstract away some of the complexity of interactions.

Who is involved?

The SCAPES project brings together an international collaboration between UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the US National Science Foundation.

The project team includes researchers with expertise in ecology, infectious diseases, geospatial analysis and statistical modelling.

Our lab will lead the risk modelling work, supported by postdoctoral researchers Natalie Imirzian, who specialises in geospatial data, and Abi Smith, who will work on statistical and mathematical modelling. The fieldwork team in Nigeria will contribute critical data that is integrated into the project's broader research efforts on Lassa fever.

Our methods

The project centers around a two-year parallel field study in three different locations in Nigeria. The field studies will use epidemiological, anthropological and ecological methodologies to capture the interplay between human activities, rodent reservoirs, and LASV transmission in human-driven landscapes.

At each focal site, we will administer quantitative household and individual surveys and measure seroprevalence in the human population. Additionally, we will characterize the anthropogenic landscapes using remote sensing methods and participatory rural appraisal, and perform rodent trapping to parameterize key components of the rodent interface. These parallel local-scale field studies will inform a set of risk models to help us understand the processes influencing the spatial and temporal distribution of LASV and risky human exposures.

Our role

We are the main partners involved in developing remote-sensing methods to characterize the landscape and developing field data-informed LASV risk models.