Valley fever is endemic to hot and dry regions like the southwestern United States and California’s San Joaquin Valley, but a new study predicts climate change will cause the fungal infection’s range to more than double in size this century, reaching previously unaffected areas across the western U.S.
Valley fever is endemic to hot and dry regions like the southwestern United States and California’s San Joaquin Valley, but a new study predicts climate change will cause the fungal infection’s range to more than double in size this century, reaching previously unaffected areas across the western U.S.
In a new study published in AGU’s journal GeoHealth, scientists at the University of California, Irvine claim that in a high-warming scenario, the list of affected states will jump from 12 to 17 and the number of individual valley fever cases will grow by 50 percent by the year 2100. The states projected to host newly endemic counties are Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, and the disease is expected to become more widespread in Colorado, Idaho and Oklahoma, according to the study.
“The range of valley fever is going to increase substantially,” said Morgan Gorris, a former UCI PhD student in Earth system science and lead author of the new study. “We made projections out to the end of the 21st century, and our model predicts that valley fever will travel farther north throughout the western United States, especially in the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains and throughout the Great Plains, and by that time, much of the western U.S. will be considered endemic.”
Read more at: American Geophysical Union
