Objective sampling design in a highly heterogeneous landscape - characterizing environmental determinants of malaria vector distribution in French Guiana, in the Amazonian region
Open Access
- 1 January 2013
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in BMC Ecology
- Vol. 13 (1), 45
- https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6785-13-45
Abstract
Sampling design is a key issue when establishing species inventories and characterizing habitats within highly heterogeneous landscapes. Sampling efforts in such environments may be constrained and many field studies only rely on subjective and/or qualitative approaches to design collection strategy. The region of Cacao, in French Guiana, provides an excellent study site to understand the presence and abundance of Anopheles mosquitoes, their species dynamics and the transmission risk of malaria across various environments. We propose an objective methodology to define a stratified sampling design. Following thorough environmental characterization, a factorial analysis of mixed groups allows the data to be reduced and non-collinear principal components to be identified while balancing the influences of the different environmental factors. Such components defined new variables which could then be used in a robust k-means clustering procedure. Then, we identified five clusters that corresponded to our sampling strata and selected sampling sites in each stratum.Keywords
This publication has 21 references indexed in Scilit:
- Le paludisme en France : métropole et outre-merMedecine Et Maladies Infectieuses, 2011
- Influence of climate and river level on the incidence of malaria in Cacao, French GuianaMalaria Journal, 2011
- Studying relationships between environment and malaria incidence in Camopi (French Guiana) through the objective selection of buffer-based landscape characterisationsInternational Journal of Health Geographics, 2011
- The Landscape Similarity Toolbox: new tools for optimizing the location of control sites in experimental studiesEcography, 2010
- Thirty years of use and improvement of remote sensing, applied to epidemiology: From early promises to lasting frustrationHealth & Place, 2007
- Sampling in health geography: reconciling geographical objectives and probabilistic methods. An example of a health survey in Vientiane (Lao PDR)Emerging Themes in Epidemiology, 2007
- Linking clinical measurements and kinematic gait patterns of toe-walking using fuzzy decision treesGait & Posture, 2007
- MOSQUITO HABITATS, LAND USE, AND MALARIA RISK IN BELIZE FROM SATELLITE IMAGERYEcological Applications, 2005
- Remote Sensing and Human Health: New Sensors and New OpportunitiesEmerging Infectious Diseases, 2000
- Marriage of fuzzy sets and multiple correspondence analysis: Examples with subjective interval data and biomedical signalsFuzzy Sets and Systems, 1999