DEVELOPING ADAPTIVE FOREST MANAGEMENT PRACTICES TO MITIGATE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON HUMAN HEALTH

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: TERMINATED
• Funding Source: AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 1015433
• Grant No.: 2018-69002-27921
• Project No.: ME012450318
• Proposal No.: 2017-07290
• Program Code: A3171
• Project Start Date: Sep 1, 2018
• Project End Date: Dec 31, 2023
• Grant Year: 2018

Project Director
Gardner, A.

Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF MAINE
(N/A)
ORONO,ME 04469

Performing Department
School of Biology and Ecology

Non Technical Summary
Resilient agroecosystems have both healthy forests and healthy forest workers. This study willintegrate natural and social science research, extension, and education to develop and test adaptiveland management practices to protect private forest landowners, foresters, and loggers againstexposure to tick-borne disease and to manage the spread and persistence of tick-borne diseasein theforest landscape. Due to climate change, Maine has experienced a five-fold increase in incidence ofLyme disease over the past decade, providing an urgent need and a unique socio-ecological contextto investigate the effects of forest management on infectious disease transmission. Forest workersare at particularly high risk of contracting tick-borne disease due to their high occupational exposure to ticks andlow perceptions of tick-borne disease risk. We will conduct applied ecological research to understand the impactof timber harvesting on risk of exposure to tick-borne disease and the causal mechanisms underlying observedpatterns. We will conduct applied social science research to understand the economic,environmental, and production factors that influence private forest landowners' decision-makingprocesses related to land management and tick-borne diseaseprevention. These results will be used to informpractical recommendations to mitigate the impacts of climate change on tick-borne diseasetransmission that arebased on scientific data and compatible with landowners' economic interests. Finally, we willdevelop placed-based, intensive education programs for undergraduate and graduate students and acitizen science project to engage forest workers in interdisciplinary approaches to natural resourcemanagement and context-specific practices to protect community health while sustaining a robust forest product supply chain.

Animal Health Component

0%

Research Effort Categories

Basic

50%

Applied

50%

Developmental

0%

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
722	3120	1130	50%
123	0613	3100	50%

Knowledge Area
722 - Zoonotic Diseases and Parasites Affecting Humans; 123 - Management and Sustainability of Forest Resources;

Subject Of Investigation
3120 - Spiders, mites, ticks, and other arthropods; 0613 - Mixed conifer-broadleaf forests;

Field Of Science
1130 - Entomology and acarology; 3100 - Management;

Keywords

forestry

ixodes scapularis

lyme disease

climate change

tick-borne disease

Goals / Objectives
The broad goals of this project are to develop and deliver practical recommendations to mitigate the impacts of climate change on tick-borne disease transmission that are informed by empirical data and compatible with forest landowners' economic interests. The study will address the following general questions: (1) Can forest management practices (e.g., silviculture) by individual landowners facilitate or inhibit local-scale and landscape-scale tick-borne disease transmission in a changing climate via impacts on vertebrate biodiversity and habitat (e.g., microclimate) conditions? (2) What are private forest landowners, foresters, and loggers' attitudes, beliefs, concerns, and knowledge related to risk of exposure to tick-borne disease? (3) What economic, environmental, and production factors influence individual decision-making processes related to land management and tick-borne disease prevention, and how do stakeholders prioritize these factors in conflicting scenarios (i.e., contradicting economic, environmental, and production needs)? (4) How can participation in place-based, intensive education programs and citizen science by undergraduates, graduate students, and forest workers foster interdisciplinary approaches to natural resource management and context-specific practices to protect rural community health while sustaining a robust forest product supply chain?We will address these general questions via the following supporting aims: (1) Identify timber harvesting practices that facilitateor inhibit transmission of threebacterial tick-borne pathogens (Lyme disease, human granulocytic anaplasmosis, andhuman babesiosis) by conducting fine-scale tick sampling and wildlife monitoring inMassabesic Experimental Forest and Maine Woodland Owners Land Trust properties; (2) Characterize private forest landowners' decision-making processes related to timberharvesting and tick-borne disease prevention on their properties using a mixed methods survey design; (3) Model the effect of timber harvesting practices on tick-borne disease transmission at large spatialscales under different future socio-ecological scenarios using agent-based modeling tointegrate landowner behavior with a forest growth and yield model, a climate model, and tickabundance and tick-borne disease prevalence data; (4) Deliver a science-based tick-borne disease prevention education and citizen science program to forestworkers by developing tick-borne disease education materials targeting landowners, foresters, and loggersand training stakeholders to drag-sample for ticks on their own properties; (5) Develop interdisciplinary training opportunities in resilient agroecosystems forundergraduate and graduate students using action-oriented, community-based projects toteach socio-ecological approaches to tick-borne disease research and landowner outreach, including anintensive one-week training experience in resilient agroecosystems for graduate students.

Project Methods
A) Ecological Research:Timber harvesting createssignificant ecological disturbance with considerable potential to alter the biotic and abioticconditions that influence tick-borne disease transmission. Numerous long-term silviculture studies conductedin New England indicate that forest management can have highly variable effects on bothmicrohabitat featuresand wildlife communities. However, no studies to date have examined theimpacts of forest management on population dynamics or survival of the black-legged tick,interactions between ticks and their vertebrate hosts, or tick-borne disease infection prevalence in ticks. Wehypothesize that different timber harvesting methods may cause an ecological cascade resultingin variation in tick-borne disease exposure risk via direct effects on forest microhabitat characteristics andwildlife communities and indirect effects on tick abundance and pathogen prevalence. We willuse a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) framework to test the direct and indirect effects oftimber harvesting methods on microhabitat features, wildlife communities, tick abundance, tick-borne disease prevalence, and entomological risk of tick-borne disease exposure.Risk of human exposure to tick-borne diseaseis quantified by estimating the density of infected nymphs(DIN), which is the product of the density of nymphs (DON) and the nymphal infectionprevalence (NIP). Therefore, it is important to consider processes that altertick density and tick infection rates independently to understand the causal ecologicalmechanisms underlying tick-borne disease risk. We hypothesize seven direct relationships between variablesleading to net variation in risk of exposure to tick-borne disease as a consequence oftimber harvest methods (groups, patch, shelterwood, and thinning systems compared to eachother and to an unmanaged control).We anticipate our results will identify timber harvestingmethods that facilitate and inhibit tick-borne diseasetransmission and elucidate the causalmechanisms underlying these patterns,enabling us to provide to forest workersforest management recommendationsbased on an ecologically-basedunderstanding of empirical data.B) Social Science Research: Our social science research goal is to characterize private forest landowner decision-makingprocesses related to timber harvesting and tick-borne disease prevention, addressing the following specificquestions: 1) what are private forest landowners' attitudes, beliefs, concerns, and knowledgerelated to tick-borne disease; 2) what preventions and interventions have forest workers employed to preventtick-borne disease; 3) where do private forest landowners find information about tick-borne disease; 4) what economic,environmental and production factors go into individual decision-making process related totimber harvesting, and does this include tick-borne disease prevention; 5) how do private forest landownersprioritize factors in conflicting scenarios (i.e., contradicting economic, environmental, andproduction needs); and 6) how does the uncertainty related to climate change influenceharvesting and tick-borne disease prevention decision-making?We anticipate that our results will provideinsights into the economic, environmental, and production factors underlying forestagroecosystem management decision-makingprocesses, which will inform our efforts todeliver recommendations for mitigation of tick-borne disease risk at individual and landscape scales.A comprehensive literature review will be conducted of primary andsecondary sources to catalog existing human dimensions and medical research regarding humanperceptions of tick-borne disease and other zoonotic diseases. This work will allow us to understand thecurrent state of human dimensions research on tick-borne disease in the U.S. and internationally.Questionnaires composed of both closed-ended and open-endedquestions will be developed to answer research questions (described above). We will sample 50small woodland owners in each town. In towns with ≤ 50 woodland owners, questionnaires willbe distributed at every house whereas in towns with ≥ 50 woodland owners, 50 questionnaireswill be randomly distributed. A total of 250 questionnaires will be distributed and retrieved frompotential respondents. Questions included in the questionnaire will be adapted from previousresearch identified through the literature review. Questionnaires will be distributed and collectedon-site and in-person to woodland owners in the towns of Alfred, Cumberland, Sidney, Winthrop,and Raymond using the drop-off and pick-up (DOPU) method. In this method, questionnaire packages are dropped off door-to-door with astated pick-up time, and two attempts are made to pick up the survey.Theoretical model testing will utilizeregression modelsand SEM.C) Integrated Research:The data collected for Objectives A and B are ideal for modeling as a coupled social-ecologicalsystem (SES). A SES joins human and biophysical subsystems in two-way feedback interactions. The forest, private forest landowners, and tick-borne disease transmission require anunderstanding of the dynamic interactive feedback loops between the social aspect of landownersand the biophysical components of the forest vegetation, ticks, and tick-borne disease. Agent-Based Models (ABMs) are one tool thatcould help increase understanding of social-ecological system functions. ABMs are well suited for family forests withmultiple and repeated decisions by individual landowners which have interaction effects betweeneach other and with the environment. The value of ABMs can include identifying possibleecological, economic, and social outcomes of landowner decisions, especially in reaction tochanging environmental or social conditions (networks, policy, etc.). ABMs can also illustratesystem parameters and properties that lead to desired and undesired outcomes. In our case, wewill focus on human health related outcomes from adaptive forest management.The biophysical components of our ABM model, which will be built in NetLogo, will becomposed of a spatial forested landscape where vegetation is governed by a forest growth andyield model and a climate model. TBD will be modeled via invasion biology rule sets validatedwith data from Objective A. Social science data will come from the survey work in Objective B.Existing parcel boundaries, in digital format, for a town in Kennebec or Cumberland County,Maine (to be selected) with significant family forest ownership will provide the initial landscapefor the model. The National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD) will be used for stratification of parcelsinto basic forest cover types, as well as identification of agricultural and urban cover types.Inventories for these general forest types will be generated by classifying Forest InventoryAnalysis (FIA) plots into the general land cover classes and then randomly assigning them tostands of that forest type within the landscape. These forest inventories will then be grownthrough time using the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) developed by the US Forest Service.Decisions impacting forest and TBD conditions (i.e., harvesting) can be enacted through FVS,following the query, command, response system that was utilized in the PALM to create interactions between agents and their environment. Decision-making will be handled bya separate application that factors in management objectives using the multi-dimensionaltechnique. The option will be included to weight thesemultiple objectives according to the human health goals and behaviors of each agent.

Progress 09/01/18 to 12/31/23

Outputs
Target Audience:Over the duration of the project, wedisseminated research results to diverse stakeholder audiences. At the beginning of the project, as part of the development of research and outreach objectives, we engaged a stakeholder advisory board with membership including representatives of the Maine CDC, Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Maine Forest Service, Maine Woodland Owners, Maine Society of American Foresters, Forest Stewards Guild (Northeast Region), Professional Logging Contractors of Maine, Northeastern Master Logger Program, Maine Land Trust Network, and University of Maine Cooperative Extension. For two years, we conducted a large-scale citizen science tick surveillance project that engaged over 200 private forest landowners in collection of ticks on their woodlands and we prepared individual reports for all citizen scientists. We shared research findings with scientific audiences via conference presentations (e.g., Entomological Society of America annual meeting, International Association for Society and Natural Resources Conference, Ecological Society of America annual meeting, Northeast Fish and Wildlife Conference), workshops, and manuscript submissions to peer-reviewed journals in entomology, disease ecology, and human dimensions. Finally, we communicated about our project with public audiences via media appearances (TV, newspaper, and newsletter). Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Six graduate students, over a dozen undergraduate students, one postdoctoral researcher, and two technicians participated in the project. Each received training and mentoring commensurate with their role in the project and professional objectives, including completing Responsible Conduct of Research training. Dr. Andrés Urcuqui was a postdoctoral researcher under the supervision of Leahy and Sponarski who conducted quantitative synthesis of ecological and social science data and development of an integrated socio-ecological system model focused on coupled interactions between forest management decision-making and tick-borne disease transmission. During his final year at the University of Maine, he was hired as an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago. Our graduate students included: Christine Conte (MS in Ecology and Environmental Sciences, December 2019) who conducted ecological research on the near-term impacts of timber harvesting on ticks under the supervision of Gardner; Katie Perry (MS in Ecology and Environmental Sciences, May 2021) who conductedsocial science research concerning individual (i.e., recreationist and forest landowner) tick-borne disease awareness and risk prevention strategies under the supervision of Sponarski; Brittany Schappach (MS in Entomology, August 2022) who studied off-host tick survival under the supervision of Gardner and Leahy; Alyssa Marini (MS in Entomology, December 2023) who conducted research on the impact of timber harvesting on mosquito abundance under the supervision of Gardner; Stephanie Hurd (PhD in Ecology and Environmental Sciences, planned graduation in May 2024) who conducted research on tick-borne disease transmission in managed forests; and Casey Olechnowicz (PhD in Forest Resources, ongoing) who conducted social science research concerning community tick-borne disease awareness and risk management under the supervision of Leahy. Elissa Ballman served as the lead technician for the project under the supervision of Gardner. Michael Galli, a recent University of Maine graduate, worked as a full-time assistant to Ballman. All participants participated in regular team meetings and leaddata analysis and dissemination of research findings. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We disseminated research findings to scientific audiences via multiple conference presentations to interdisciplinary audiences and manuscript submissions to peer-reviewed journals. We led four conference sessions related to this work at conferences, including a session about ecosystem services valuation at the International Symposium on Inland Water in the Americas, a session about human dimensions of vector-borne disease management at the IASNR Conference, and a session about integrated pest management at the Maine Sustainability and Water Conference. We also conducteda citizen science tick surveillance project that engaged over 200 private woodland owners in collecting ticks on their own properties and we established a stakeholder advisory board with membership including representatives of the Maine CDC, Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Maine Forest Service, Maine Woodland Owners, Maine Society of American Foresters, Forest Stewards Guild (Northeast Region), Professional Logging Contractors of Maine, Northeastern Master Logger Program, Maine Land Trust Network, and University of Maine Cooperative Extension. Finally, we communicated about our project with public audiences via media appearances (TV, newspaper, and newsletter) and outreach presentations (e.g., to the Maine Entomological Society and Piscataquis County Soil and Water Conservation District). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We conducted a study with three treatments (i.e., no harvest within the past 20 years, low harvest intensity, and high harvest intensity) to test the hypothesis that harvest intensity alters tick densities and infection prevalence. As part of this study, we conducted overstory and understory forest measurements, deployed iButton data loggers to collect microclimate data, collected off-host ticks using the drag sampling technique, and deployed motion-triggered cameras to characterize deer presence. We found that higher harvest intensity (i.e., lower basal area and lower trees per acre) reduces densities of blacklegged ticks but does not alter tick infection prevalence. We completed a field study of the impacts of timber harvesting on the ecology and behavior of small mammal reservoir hosts for tick-borne pathogens. As part of this study, we conducted live-trapping of small mammals in high harvest intensity and unharvested control plots, estimated small mammal population size, quantified small mammal tick burdens, and quantified small mammal pathogen infection prevalence. We also conducted "giving up density" behavioral assays to assess the extent to which timber harvesting may alter small mammal foraging behavior and tick-host encounter frequency. We found that low harvest intensity was associated with higher small mammal population sizes and foraging behavior than high harvest intensity, but tick burdens were higher on rodents in high harvest intensity stands than in low harvest intensity stands. We completed a field study of the impacts of forest fragmentation at the landscape scale on wildlife host abundance and behavior, tick densities, and pathogen infection prevalence. Using GIS and remote sensing, we located 20 experimental units spanning a range of patch sizes, isolation, and functional and structural connectivity in southern Maine and have visited these sites biweekly to collect ticks and monitor the activity and behavior of deer and potential predators of small mammals using trail cameras and foraging trays. Our analyses demonstrate that forest patch isolation is negatively correlated with the density of ticks infected with pathogens and forest patch edge density is positively correlated with the density if infected ticks. A path analysis supported an indirect correlation between predator activity and tickdensity via small mammal foraging behavior. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis on the effects of invasivevegetation removal, prescribed burns, and timber harvesting in temperate forests on host-seeking hard-bodied tick density and infection prevalence. We found prescribed burns and invasive vegetation removal reduce hard-bodied tickdensity but have no effect on tick infection prevalence.We qualitatively report the same pattern for timber harvesting but call for furtherstudies on the relationship between this management practice and tick populations. We completed a side project expanding the scope of the study to encompass the impacts of active forest management on mosquito ecology and mosquito-host interactions. As part of this work, we trapped mosquitoes in managed forests with five treatments (i.e., deciduous with no recent harvest history, coniferous with no recent harvest history, coniferous with overstory removal, coniferous with thinning, and coniferous with shelterwood establishment cut). We found that mosquito densities were higher in deciduous stands than coniferous stands, and in stands with any recent harvest history compared to unharvested stands. We developed, launched, and completed two years of the Maine Forest Tick Survey, a citizen science study that seeks to understand linkages between forest management and ticks and tick-borne pathogens. Over two years, we recruited over 200 volunteer landowners across nine counties in Maine. Volunteers collected ticks from their wooded properties using drag cloths three times in July and filled out surveys concerning their land management history, knowledge of ticks and tick-borne pathogens, and motivation for participating in citizen science. We identified all collected ticks to species and tested blacklegged tick nymphs for the three most common tick-borne pathogens in the region. Preliminary analyses of the citizen science data revealed correlations between recency of timber harvest, presence of invasive plants, and tick densities. Properties that had a timber harvest anytime in the last 20 years had significantly fewer ticks than those that have not had a timber harvest in over 20 years. Properties with invasive plants had significantly more blacklegged tick nymphs than properties without invasive plants. These findings may contribute to development of practical guidelines to manage tick-borne disease risk through forestry. Three social science research efforts were designed to better understand how communities receive information about tick-borne disease and tick management and the role of vulnerability and risk perceptions on community-level decisionmaking. These include a quantitative exploration of social science surveys exploring perceived vulnerability towards ticks and tick-borne diseases, an applied geographic mapping assessment of social vulnerability towards Lyme disease in Maine, and a qualitative communication analysis of popular frames used to describe ticks and tick-borne diseases by common information sources. Major activities conducted for the first research design were finalizing the quantitative analysis of surveys (n=357) and publishing an article in Ticks and Tick-Borne Diseases. Major activities conducted for the second design were finalizing geographic analysis and developing map outputs of social vulnerability towards Lyme disease in Maine. Activities for the third design included finishing the collection of communication materials from a finalized list of sources, manuscript and literature development, and coding of communications material. Each of the three research designs have distinct data types and all three have completed planned data collection. The first uses quantitative Likert-scale data from mail and drop-off surveys, the second GIS project includes secondary data from a variety of sources such as the Census, Maine CDC, and the state's GIS data webpage. We conducted multipleresearch efforts synthesizing the biophysical and social science dimensions of the project. First, we designed a social-ecological systems (SES) modeling framework to study the effects of timber harvesting on tick density and tick-borne disease prevalence with participation from forest stakeholders. We conducted a literature review of peer-reviewed articles about SES modeling in vector-borne disease research with participation from stakeholders, designed a modeling framework that uses social science and ecological the tick-borne disease SES, and integrated a collaborative modeling approach to involve forest stakeholders in research. A concept paper based on this work is under submission to EcoHealth. We programmed an agent-based model using NetLogo to study the effects of forest and wildlife management practices on tick densities and tick-borne pathogen prevalence. We developed a negotiation-based role-play simulation (RPS) to engage stakeholders in forest and environmental decision-making. We will collect qualitative data (perceptions on Lyme disease, ticks, forest management practices to reduce human exposure to Lyme disease and ticks; assessment of learning outcomes from participating in the RPS negotiation; perceived benefits and limitations of individual and collective actions of forest management to control ticks in public and private lands) and quantitative data (cognitive, normative, and relational learning outcomes of an RPS). We tested the RPS with UMaine students and conference attendees at the Entomological Society of America annual meeting.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2023 Citation: SN Hurd, LS Kenefic, JE Leahy, CC Sponarski, and AM Gardner. Cascading impacts of overstory structure in managed forests on understory structure, microclimate conditions, and Ixodes scapularis (Acari: Ixodidae) densities. Journal of Medical Entomology. In revision.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2023 Citation: AM Urcuqui-Bustamante, JE Leahy, CC Sponarski, and AM Gardner. Collaborative modeling of the tick-borne disease socio-ecological system: a conceptual framework. EcoHealth. In press.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: I Yen, AM Gardner, and A Mortelliti. 2023. In the Lyme light: individual trait determinants of Borrelia burgdorferi infection in Peromyscus mice. Journal of Mammalogy. Online ahead of print.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2023 Citation: AM Urcuqui-Bustamante, KC Perry, JE Leahy, AM Gardner, and CC Sponarski. Psychosocial determinants of Lyme disease preventive behavior among outdoor recreationists. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism. In revision.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2023 Citation: SN Hurd and AM Gardner. Timber harvesting impacts small mammal population size, foraging behavior, and tick infestation. EcoHealth. Under review.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: SN Hurd and AM Gardner. The effects of forest management practices across spatial scales on wildlife communities and the transmission of tick-borne pathogens. Presentation at the 2023 Entomological Society of America (ESA) Meeting. November 5-8, 2023 in National Harbor, MD.

Progress 09/01/22 to 08/31/23

Outputs
Target Audience:During the current reporting period, we continued to disseminate research results to diverse stakeholder audiences. We shared the findings of a large-scale citizen science tick surveillance project that engaged over 200 private forest landowners. We also shared research findings with scientific audiences via conference presentations, workshops, and manuscript submissions to peer-reviewed journals. Finally, we communicated about our project with public audiences via media appearances (TV, newspaper, and newsletter). Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Three graduate students, four undergraduate students, one postdoctoral researcher, and two technicians were involved in this project during the reporting period. Each is receiving training and mentoring commensurate with their role in the project and professional objectives, including completing Responsible Conduct of Research training. Dr. Andrés Urcuqui is a postdoctoral researcher under the supervision of co-PD Leahy and Sponarski who is conducting quantitative synthesis of ecological and social science data and development of an integrated socio-ecological system model focused on coupled interactions between forest management decision-making and tick-borne disease transmission. Stephanie Hurd is a PhD candidate in Ecology and Environmental Sciences and Alyssa Marini is a MS student in Entomology co-leading the field ecology components of the project, and they are mentored primarily by PD Gardner. Chloe Hart, Juliana Lepanto, Donne Sinderson, and Sophie Whiting are undergraduate students who assisted Hurd and Marini in disease ecology field work over the summer. Casey Olechnowicz is a PhD candidate in Forest Resources leading social science research concerning community tick-borne disease awareness and risk management, and he is mentored primarily by Leahy. Elissa Ballman served as the lead technician for the project under the supervision of Gardner. Michael Galli, a recent University of Maine graduate, worked as a full-time assistant to Ballman. All participants have participated in regular team meetings and are leading data analysis and dissemination of research findings. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We disseminated research findings to scientific audiences via multiple conference presentations to interdisciplinary audiences and manuscript submissions to peer-reviewed journals. We also led four conference sessions related to this work at conferences, including a session about ecosystem services valuation at the International Symposium on Inland Water in the Americas, a session about human dimensions of vector-borne disease management at the IASNR Conference, and a session about integrated pest management at the Maine Sustainability and Water Conference. During a previous reporting period, we concluded a citizen science tick surveillance project that engaged over 200 private woodland owners in collecting ticks on their own properties and we established a stakeholder advisory board with membership including representatives of the Maine CDC, Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Maine Forest Service, Maine Woodland Owners, Maine Society of American Foresters, Forest Stewards Guild (Northeast Region), Professional Logging Contractors of Maine, Northeastern Master Logger Program, Maine Land Trust Network, and University of Maine Cooperative Extension. Finally, we communicated about our project with public audiences via media appearances (TV, newspaper, and newsletter) and outreach presentations (e.g., to the Maine Entomological Society and Piscataquis County Soil and Water Conservation District). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? The planned end date of this project is December 2023. During this time, we will submit two manuscripts (currently in preparation) concerning the impacts of understory and overstory forest characteristics on blacklegged tick densities, small mammal activity, and pathogen infection prevalence, led by PhD student Hurd. We will complete the meta-analysis analyzing the impacts of active forest management practices on tick-borne pathogen transmission. We anticipate an additional manuscript to be prepared and submitted related to this research effort, led by Hurd. We will submit a manuscript (currently in preparation) using our citizen science data set to address the impacts of different active forest management strategies on tick densities and the interacting effects of landscape context and stand-level management practices on tick densities. This effort will be led by Gardner. We will continue to revise and submit manuscripts related to our social science research, including a conceptual paper led by Urcuqui, a GIS analysis of Lyme disease risk led by PhD student Olechnowicz, and a manuscript focused on health risk communication (currently in preparation) led by Olechnowicz.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We conducted a study with three treatments (i.e., no harvest within the past 20 years, low harvest intensity, and high harvest intensity) and five blocks (i.e., towns in southern Maine) to test the hypothesis that harvest intensity alters tick densities and infection prevalence. As part of this study, we conducted overstory and understory forest measurements, deployed iButton data loggers to collect microclimate data, collected off-host ticks using the drag sampling technique, and deployed motion-triggered cameras to characterize deer presence. We found that higher harvest intensity (i.e., lower basal area and lower trees per acre) reduces densities of blacklegged ticks but does not alter tick infection prevalence. We completed a field study of the impacts of timber harvesting on the ecology and behavior of small mammal reservoir hosts for tick-borne pathogens. As part of this study, we conducted live-trapping of small mammals in high harvest intensity and unharvested control plots, estimated small mammal population size, quantified small mammal tick burdens, and quantified small mammal pathogen infection prevalence. We also conducted "giving up density" behavioral assays to assess the extent to which timber harvesting may alter small mammal foraging behavior and tick-host encounter frequency. We found that low harvest intensity was associated with higher small mammal population sizes and foraging behavior than high harvest intensity, but tick burdens were higher on rodents in high harvest intensity stands than in low harvest intensity stands. We completed a field study of the impacts of forest fragmentation at the landscape scale on tick densities and pathogen infection prevalence. Using GIS and remote sensing, we located 20 experimental units spanning a range of patch sizes, isolation, and functional and structural connectivity in southern Maine and have visited these sites biweekly to collect ticks and monitor the activity and behavior of deer and potential predators of small mammals using trail cameras and foraging trays. Preliminary analyses suggest that intermediate levels of fragmentation promote the highest tick densities. We completed a side project expanding the scope of the study to encompass the impacts of active forest management on mosquito ecology and mosquito-host interactions, introducing consideration of other arthropod disease vector species and building upon previous research conducted by Gardner concerning the effects of invasive plants on mosquito ecology. As part of this work, we trapped mosquitoes in managed forests with five treatments (i.e., deciduous with no recent harvest history, coniferous with no recent harvest history, coniferous with overstory removal, coniferous with thinning, and coniferous with shelterwood establishment cut). We found that mosquito densities were higher in deciduous stands than coniferous stands, and in stands with any recent harvest history compared to unharvested stands. We developed, launched, and completed two years of the Maine Forest Tick Survey, a citizen science study that seeks to understand linkages between forest management and ticks and tick-borne pathogens. Over two years, we recruited over 200 volunteer landowners across nine counties in Maine. Volunteers collected ticks from their wooded properties using drag cloths three times in July and filled out surveys concerning their land management history, knowledge of ticks and tick-borne pathogens, and motivation for participating in citizen science. We identified all collected ticks to species and tested blacklegged tick nymphs for the three most common tick-borne pathogens in the region (Borrelia burgdorferi, Anaplasma phagocytophilum, and Babesia microti). We published an article describing the citizen science methodology in Ticks and Tick-Borne Diseases. Preliminary analyses of the citizen science data revealed correlations between recency of timber harvest, presence of invasive plants, and tick densities. Properties that had a timber harvest anytime in the last 20 years had significantly fewer ticks than those that have not had a timber harvest in over 20 years. Properties with invasive plants had significantly more blacklegged tick nymphs than properties without invasive plants. These findings may contribute to development of practical guidelines to manage tick-borne disease risk through forestry. Three social science research efforts were designed to better understand how communities receive information about tick-borne disease and tick management and the role of vulnerability and risk perceptions on community-level decision-making. These include a quantitative exploration of social science surveys exploring perceived vulnerability towards ticks and tick-borne diseases, an applied geographic mapping assessment of social vulnerability towards Lyme disease in Maine, and a qualitative communication analysis of popular frames used to describe ticks and tick-borne diseases by common information sources. Major activities conducted for the first research design were finalizing the quantitative analysis of surveys (n=357) and publishing an article in Ticks and Tick-Borne Diseases. Major activities conducted for the second design were finalizing geographic analysis and developing map outputs of social vulnerability towards Lyme disease in Maine. Activities for the third design included finishing the collection of communication materials from a finalized list of sources, manuscript and literature development, and coding of communications material. Each of the three research designs have distinct data types and all three have completed planned data collection. The first uses quantitative Likert-scale data from mail and drop-off surveys, the second GIS project includes secondary data from a variety of sources such as the Census, Maine CDC, and the state's GIS data webpage. During the current project period, we continued research synthesizing the biophysical and social science dimensions of the project. First, we designed a social-ecological systems (SES) modeling framework to study the effects of timber harvesting on tick density and tick-borne disease prevalence with participation from forest stakeholders. We conducted a literature review of peer-reviewed articles about SES modeling in vector-borne disease research with participation from stakeholders, designed a modeling framework that uses social science and ecological the tick-borne disease SES, and integrated a collaborative modeling approach to involve forest stakeholders in research. A concept paper based on this work is under submission to EcoHealth. We programmed an agent-based model using NetLogo to study the effects of forest and wildlife management practices on tick densities and tick-borne pathogen prevalence. We developed a negotiation-based role-play simulation (RPS) to engage stakeholders in forest and environmental decision-making. We will collect qualitative data (perceptions on Lyme disease, ticks, forest management practices to reduce human exposure to Lyme disease and ticks; assessment of learning outcomes from participating in the RPS negotiation; perceived benefits and limitations of individual and collective actions of forest management to control ticks in public and private lands) and quantitative data (cognitive, normative, and relational learning outcomes of an RPS). We tested the RPS with UMaine students and conference attendees at the Entomological Society of America annual meeting.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: ES Ballman, JE Leahy, CC Sponarski, MG Galli, and AM Gardner. 2023. A citizen science approach to investigate the distribution, abundance, and pathogen infection of vector ticks through active surveillance. Ticks and Tick-Borne Diseases 14: e102144.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: C Olechnowicz, JE Leahy, AM Gardner, and CC Sponarski. 2023. Perceived vulnerability for Lyme disease questionnaire: A social science tool for understanding tick-borne disease attitudes. Ticks and Tick-Borne Diseases 14: e102120.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2023 Citation: Urcuqui-Bustamante, A.M.; J.E. Leahy; C. Sponarski & A.M. Gardner. Submitted to EcoHealth. Collaborative Modeling of the Tick-borne Disease Social-Ecological System.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2023 Citation: Urcuqui-Bustamante, A.M.; K.C. Perry; C. Sponarski & J.E. Leahy. Submitted to Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism. Psychosocial Determinants of Lyme Disease Preventive Behavior among outdoor recreationists.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2023 Citation: Olechnowicz, C., Leahy, J., Sponarski, C., & Gardner, A. (2023). Submitted to Landscape & Urban Planning. Assessing the Social Vulnerability of Maine Communities to Lyme Disease.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Urcuqui-Bustamante, A.M. 2023. Challenges and opportunities in ecosystem services valuation to promote conservation of water resources and key ecosystems. Keynote speaker. The Fourth International Symposium on Inland Water in the Americas: Neotropical Biodiversity, functions, and Ecosystem Services. Solol�, Guatemala.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Urcuqui-Bustamante, A.M.; J.E. Leahy; C. Sponarski & A.M. Gardner. 2023. Tick-borne diseases, forest management and stakeholder participation in informing integrated pest management programs. International Association for Society and Natural Resources (IASNR). Portland, Maine, USA.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Hurd, S., Gardner, A., Distinguishing between landscape fragmentation metrics to elucidate mechanisms driving Ixodes scapularis densities. Accepted presentation at the 2023 Ecological Society of America (ESA) Meeting. August 6-11, 2023 in Portland, OR.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Hurd, S., Gardner, A., The effects of timber harvesting on small mammal abundance, tick burden, and foraging behavior, with implications for tick densities. Accepted presentation at the 2023 Northeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies Conference (NEFWC). April 30-May 2, 2023 in Hershey, PA.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Hurd, S., Gardner, A., The effects of timber harvesting on small mammal communities with implications for tick densities. Accepted poster at the 2023 University of Maine Student Symposium. April 14, 2023.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Hurd, S., Gardner, A., The effects of timber harvesting on small mammal abundance, tick burden, and foraging behavior, with implications for tick densities. Accepted presentation at the 2023 Maine Sustainability and Water Conference. March 30, 2023 in Augusta, ME.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Hurd, S., Gardner, A., The effect of landscape fragmentation on Ixodes scapularis densities through altered small mammal behavior and their predators activity. Accepted presentation at the University of Maine School of Biology and Ecology Seminar. January 20, 2023 in Orono, ME.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Hurd, S., Gardner, A., Loftin, C. The effect of landscape fragmentation on Ixodes scapularis densities through altered small mammal behavior and their predators activity. Accepted presentation at the 2022 Annual Society for Vector Ecology (SOVE) Meeting. September 19-23, 2022 in Honolulu, HI.

Progress 09/01/21 to 08/31/22

Outputs
Target Audience:During the current reporting period, we continued to disseminate research results to diverse stakeholder audiences. We completed the second year of a large-scale citizen science tick surveillance project that engaged over 200 private forest landowners. We shared research findings with scientific audiences via conference presentations, workshops, and manuscript submissions to peer-reviewed journals. Finally, we communicated about our project with public audiences via media appearances (TV, newspaper, and newsletter). Changes/Problems:Our project was negatively affected by COVID-19 prior to this reporting period, although we are now on track to complete all research, education, and outreach plans by the end of August 2023. Graduate student progress and field data collection were stalled due to COVID-19 policies and resumed during the summer of 2021. We have hired a postdoctoral research associate and an additional Master's student after a one-year hiring delay. Much of our outreach plans were delayed due to lack of in-person events for foresters, loggers, and landowners, but we have been able to resume a number of these activities within the past year with plans for additional outreach in 2022 and 2023. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Four graduate students, four undergraduate students, one postdoctoral researcher, and two technicians were involved in this project during the reporting period. Each is receiving training and mentoring commensurate with their role in the project and professional objectives, including completing Responsible Conduct of Research training. Dr. Andrés Urcuqui is a postdoctoral researcher under the supervision of co-PD Leahy and Sponarski who is conducting quantitative synthesis of ecological and social science data and development of an integrated socio-ecological system model focused on coupled interactions between forest management decision-making and tick-borne disease transmission. Stephanie Hurd is a PhD candidate in Ecology and Environmental Sciences and Alyssa Marini is a MS student in Entomology co-leading the field ecology components of the project, and they are mentored primarily by PD Gardner. Braedon Stevens, Emma Gibbons, Alex Mahar, and Juliana Lepanto are undergraduate students who assisted Hurd and Marini in disease ecology field work over the summer. Casey Olechnowicz is a PhD candidate in Forest Resources leading social science research concerning community tick-borne disease awareness and risk management, and he is mentored primarily by Leahy. Brittany Schappach is a Master's student in Entomology who is co-mentored in disease ecology and qualitative social science research by Gardner and Leahy. She defended her thesis and graduated from the University of Maine in August 2022. Elissa Ballman served as the citizen science coordinator for the project under the supervision of Gardner. Michael Galli, a recent University of Maine graduate, worked as a full-time assistant to Ballman. All participants have participated in regular team meetings and are leading data analysis and dissemination of research findings. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We disseminated research findings to scientific audiences via multiple conference presentations to interdisciplinary audiences and four manuscript submissions to peer-reviewed journals. We also led four workshops related to this work at conferences, including a workshop about integrated vector management at the Maine Sustainability and Water Conference, a workshop about advancing stakeholder engagement in working landscapes at the IASNR Conference, a workshop about citizen science for entomological research at the Entomological Society of America Eastern Branch annual meeting, and an accepted workshop about community-based management of tick-borne disease at the Entomological Society of America annual meeting. We concluded a citizen science tick surveillance project that engaged over 200 private woodland owners in collecting ticks on their own properties. During a previous reporting period, we established a stakeholder advisory board with membership including representatives of the Maine CDC, Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Maine Forest Service, Maine Woodland Owners, Maine Society of American Foresters, Forest Stewards Guild (Northeast Region), Professional Logging Contractors of Maine, Northeastern Master Logger Program, Maine Land Trust Network, and University of Maine Cooperative Extension. Finally, we communicated about our project with public audiences via media appearances (TV, newspaper, and newsletter) and outreach presentations (e.g., to the Maine Entomological Society and Piscataquis County Soil and Water Conservation District). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? We will prepare manuscripts concerning the impacts of understory and overstory forest characteristics on blacklegged tick densities, small mammal activity, and pathogen infection prevalence, led by PhD student Hurd. We will analyze blacklegged tick specimens collected during the first three years of the project for three common tick-borne pathogens in Maine. We will complete the meta-analysis analyzing the impacts of active forest management practices on tick-borne pathogen transmission. We anticipate an additional manuscript to be prepared and submitted related to this research effort, led by PhD student Hurd. We anticipate preparing additional manuscripts leveraging the extensive citizen science data set, encompassing topics such as: (1) impacts of different active forest management strategies on tick densities, (2) interacting effects of landscape context and stand-level management practices on tick densities, (3) misidentified (i.e., non-tick) specimens submitted by citizen scientists, (4) tick-borne disease risk perception and land management decision-making by citizen scientists. These manuscripts will be led by various personnel including Ballman, Gardner, Hurd, and Urcuqui. We will continue our tick-borne disease collaborative modeling and SES modeling efforts, led by postdoctoral researcher Urcuqui.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? For our biophysical research, we published a paper in the journal EcoHealth demonstrating that recently harvested forest land, i.e., harvested within the past five years, has lower tick densities compared to a positive control, i.e., not harvested within the past 20 years, and identified low rodent and deer densities as a potential mechanism to explain this pattern. We concluded a follow-on study of tick data collection in a randomized complete block design study with three treatments (i.e., no harvest within the past 20 years, low harvest intensity, and high harvest intensity) and five blocks (i.e., towns in southern Maine) to test the hypothesis that harvest intensity alters tick densities and infection prevalence. As part of this study, we conducted overstory and understory forest measurements, deployed iButton data loggers to collect microclimate data, collected off-host ticks using the drag sampling technique, and deployed motion-triggered cameras to characterize deer presence. Preliminary data analysis suggests that higher harvest intensity (i.e., lower basal area and lower trees per acre) reduces densities of blacklegged ticks but does not alter tick infection prevalence. We completed a field study of the impacts of timber harvesting on the ecology and behavior of small mammal reservoir hosts for tick-borne pathogens. As part of this study, we conducted live-trapping of small mammals in high harvest intensity and unharvested control plots, estimated small mammal population size, quantified small mammal tick burdens, and quantified small mammal pathogen infection prevalence. We also conducted "giving up density" behavioral assays to assess the extent to which timber harvesting may alter small mammal foraging behavior and tick-host encounter frequency. Data analysis is in progress. We are nearing completion of a field study of the impacts of forest fragmentation at the landscape scale on tick densities and pathogen infection prevalence. Using GIS and remote sensing, we located 20 experimental units spanning a range of patch sizes, isolation, and functional and structural connectivity in southern Maine and have visited these sites biweekly to collect ticks and monitor the activity and behavior of deer and potential predators of small mammals using trail cameras and foraging trays. Preliminary analyses suggest that intermediate levels of fragmentation promote the highest tick densities. We initiated a side project expanding the scope of the study to encompass the impacts of active forest management on mosquito ecology and mosquito-host interactions, introducing consideration of other arthropod disease vector species and building upon previous research conducted by Gardner concerning the effects of invasive plants on mosquito ecology. As part of this work, we trapped mosquitoes in managed forests with five treatments (i.e., deciduous with no recent harvest history, coniferous with no recent harvest history, coniferous with overstory removal, coniferous with thinning, and coniferous with shelterwood establishment cut). We also are developing assays to identify vertebrate blood meal sources of mosquitoes. We developed, launched, and completed two years of the Maine Forest Tick Survey, a citizen science study that seeks to understand linkages between forest management and ticks and tick-borne pathogens. Over two years, we recruited over 200 volunteer landowners across nine counties in Maine. Volunteers collected ticks from their wooded properties using drag cloths three times in July and filled out surveys concerning their land management history, knowledge of ticks and tick-borne pathogens, and motivation for participating in citizen science. We identified all collected ticks to species and tested blacklegged tick nymphs for the three most common tick-borne pathogens in the region (Borrelia burgdorferi, Anaplasma phagocytophilum, and Babesia microti). We report on the overall study design in a manuscript under submission to Citizen Science: Theory and Practice. Preliminary analyses of the citizen science data revealed correlations between recency of timber harvest, presence of invasive plants, and tick densities. Properties that had a timber harvest anytime in the last 20 years had significantly fewer ticks than those that have not had a timber harvest in over 20 years. Properties with invasive plants had significantly more blacklegged tick nymphs than properties without invasive plants. These findings may contribute to development of practical guidelines to manage tick-borne disease risk through forestry. Three social science research efforts were designed to better understand how communities receive information about tick-borne disease and tick management and the role of vulnerability and risk perceptions on community-level decision-making. These include a quantitative exploration of social science surveys exploring perceived vulnerability towards ticks and tick-borne diseases, an applied geographic mapping assessment of social vulnerability towards Lyme disease in Maine, and a qualitative communication analysis of popular frames used to describe ticks and tick-borne diseases by common information sources. Major activities conducted for the first research design were finalizing the quantitative analysis of surveys (n=357) and submitting a manuscript to Ticks and Tick-Borne Diseases. Major activities conducted for the second design were finalizing geographic analysis and developing map outputs of social vulnerability towards Lyme disease in Maine. Activities for the third design included finishing the collection of communication materials from a finalized list of sources, manuscript and literature development, and coding of communications material. Each of the three research designs have distinct data types and all three have completed planned data collection. The first uses quantitative Likert-scale data from mail and drop-off surveys, the second GIS project includes secondary data from a variety of sources such as the Census, Maine CDC, and the state's GIS data webpage. During the current project period, we initiated new research synthesizing the biophysical and social science dimensions of the project. First, we designed a social-ecological systems (SES) modeling framework to study the effects of timber harvesting on tick density and tick-borne disease prevalence with participation from forest stakeholders. We conducted a literature review of peer-reviewed articles about SES modeling in vector-borne disease research with participation from stakeholders, designed a modeling framework that uses social science and ecological the tick-borne disease SES, and integrated a collaborative modeling approach to involve forest stakeholders in research. A concept paper based on this work is under submission to People and Nature. We currently are developing a negotiation-based role-play simulation (RPS) to engage stakeholders in forest and environmental decision-making. We will collect qualitative data (perceptions on Lyme disease, ticks, forest management practices to reduce human exposure to Lyme disease and ticks; assessment of learning outcomes from participating in the RPS negotiation; perceived benefits and limitations of individual and collective actions of forest management to control ticks in public and private lands) and quantitative data (cognitive, normative, and relational learning outcomes of an RPS). We plan to draft the RPS, draft stakeholder analysis to identify interests and positions related to tick issues, test the RPS with UMaine students and conference attendees at the Entomological Society of America annual meeting in November, and conduct RPS workshops with forest stakeholders in Maine.

Publications

• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: A Gardner. Ecological drivers of the blacklegged tick geographic range expansion. Entomological Society of America annual meeting. November 2021.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: C Sponarski, JE Leahy, AM Gardner. Tick, Talk: Integrating biological and social science research to address ticks and Lyme disease in Maine University of Sherbrooke, October 2021.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: A Gardner. The Maine Forest Tick Survey: Cross-disciplinary and community-engaged science for public health. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions seminar. March 2022.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: S Hurd, A Gardner, L Kenefic, J Leahy. The effects of timber harvesting on small mammal abundance and foraging behavior with implications for tick densities. University of Maine Student Symposium. April 2022.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: S Hurd, A Gardner, L Kenefic, J Leahy. The effects of timber harvesting on small mammal abundance and foraging behavior with implications for tick densities. Northeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies Conference. April 2022.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2022 Citation: AM Urcuqui-Bustamante, JE Leahy, CC Sponarski, and AM Gardner. Collaborative modeling of the tick-borne disease socio-ecological system. People and Nature, in review.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2022 Citation: C Olechnowicz, JE Leahy, AM Gardner, and CC Sponarski. Perceived vulnerability for Lyme disease questionnaire: A social science tool for understanding tick-borne disease attitudes. Ticks and Tick-Borne Diseases, in review.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2022 Citation: ES Ballman, JE Leahy, CC Sponarski, and AM Gardner. The Maine Forest Tick Survey: Using citizen science to investigate the abundance, distribution, and infection prevalence of disease vector ticks. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, in review.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: E Ballman, A Gardner, J Leahy, C Sponarski. The Maine Forest Tick Survey: A community science approach to land management and ticks. Entomological Society of America Eastern Branch annual meeting. April 2022.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: M Galli, E Ballman, A Gardner. An analysis of non-tick specimens collected by citizen scientists during active tick surveillance. Entomological Society of America Eastern Branch annual meeting. April 2022.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: A Gardner, E Ballman, S Hurd, L Kenefic, J Leahy, C Olechnowicz, K Perry, C Sponarski, A Urcuqui. The Maine Forest Tick Survey: Cross-disciplinary and community-engaged science for public health. Pathways Conference. May 2022.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: AM Urcuqui-Bustamante, JE Leahy, C Sponarski, AM Gardner. Collaborative modeling of tick-borne diseases: a concept paper. International Association for Society and Natural Resources Conference. June 2022.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: CE Conte, JE Leahy, and AM Gardner. 2021. Active forest management reduces blacklegged tick and tick-borne pathogen exposure risk. EcoHealth 18: 157-168.

Progress 09/01/20 to 08/31/21

Outputs
Target Audience:During the current reporting period, we increased awareness of the Maine Forest Tick Survey project and continued to disseminate research results to diverse stakeholder audiences. We completed the first year and initiated the second year of a large-scale citizen science tick surveillance project that engaged over 300 private forest landowners. We shared research findings with scientific audiences via conference presentations and manuscript submissions to peer-reviewed journals. Finally, we communicated about our project with public audiences via media appearances (TV, newspaper, and newsletter). Changes/Problems:During the current reporting period, our project was negatively affected by COVID-19. Graduate student progress and field data collection were stalled due to COVID-19 policies and just began to resume during the summer of 2021. We have resumed small mammal trapping and off-host tick collection efforts at our planned scale. We have hired a postdoctoral research associate and an additional Master's student after a one-year hiring delay. Much of our outreach plans remain delayed due to lack of in-person events for foresters, loggers, and landowners. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Four graduate students and four undergraduate students were involved in this project during the reporting period. Each is receiving training and mentoring commensurate with their role in the project and professional objectives, including completing Responsible Conduct of Research training. Stephanie Hurd is a PhD student in Ecology and Environmental Sciences leading the field ecology components of the project, and she is mentored primarily by PD Gardner in disease ecology research. Braedon Stevens is an undergraduate student in Wildlife Ecology who assisted Hurd in disease ecology field work over the summer. Katie Perry is a Master's student in Ecology and Environmental Sciences leading social science research concerning individual (i.e., recreationist and forest landowner) tick-borne disease awareness and risk prevention strategies, and she is mentored primarily by co-PD Sponarski in human dimensions research. Perry successfully defended her Master's thesis and graduated from UMaine during the current reporting period. Casey Olechnowicz is a PhD candidate in Forest Resources leading social science research concerning community tick-borne disease awareness and risk management, and he is mentored primarily by co-PD Leahy. Brittany Schappach is a Master's student in Entomology who is co-mentored in disease ecology and qualitative social science research by Gardner and Leahy. During the current reporting period, Elissa Ballman served as the citizen science coordinator for the project under the supervision of PD Gardner. Three undergraduate students in Wildlife Ecology have worked as research assistants to Ballman (Molly Bennett, Michael Galli, and Sarah Cloutier). All participants have participated in regular team meetings and are leading data analysis and dissemination of research findings. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?During a previous reporting period, we established a stakeholder advisory board with membership including representatives of the Maine CDC, Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Maine Forest Service, Maine Woodland Owners, Maine Society of American Foresters, Forest Stewards Guild (Northeast Region), Professional Logging Contractors of Maine, Northeastern Master Logger Program, Maine Land Trust Network, and University of Maine Cooperative Extension. We initiated a citizen science tick surveillance project that enabled additional outreach to 300 PWOs. We began to disseminate research findings to scientific audiences via conference presentations to interdisciplinary audiences and manuscript submissions to peer-reviewed journals. Finally, we communicated about our project with public audiences via media appearances (TV, newspaper, and newsletter). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? We have hired a postdoctoral research associate (Dr. Andrés Urcuqui) to lead analysis and publication of social science data under the supervision of co-PD Leahy. Urcuqui will begin his appointment in September 2021 and a substantial part of his role in the project team will involve quantitative synthesis of ecological and social science data and development of an integrated socio-ecological system model focused on coupled interactions between forest management decision-making and tick-borne disease transmission. We will prepare manuscripts concerning the impacts of understory and overstory forest characteristics on blacklegged tick densities, small mammal activity, and pathogen infection prevalence, led by PhD student Hurd. We will analyze blacklegged tick specimens collected during the first three years of the project for three common tick-borne pathogens in Maine and conduct a second field season of our landscape-scale study of forest management impacts on tick densities and tick-borne pathogen infection prevalence. We will submit a small grant proposal to the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund led by PhD student Hurd to support these efforts. We will complete tick identifications and tick-borne pathogen testing for samples collected during the second year of our citizen science project. Like during the current reporting period, we will create personalized reports for all citizen scientists involved in the project to provide information concerning tick-borne disease in the region and the unique risks that exist on individual participants' forest properties. We will prepare manuscripts concerning the determinants of three prominent Lyme disease preventative behaviors: wearing protective clothing, applying repellents, and performing a tick check, led by MS student Perry. We will prepare manuscripts characterizing private forest landowners' decision-making processes related to timber harvesting and tick-borne disease prevention on their properties, led by MS student Perry. We anticipate preparing multiple manuscripts leveraging the extensive citizen science data set, encompassing topics such as: (1) design of the citizen science project and motivations for participation, (2) impacts of different active forest management strategies on tick densities, (3) interacting effects of landscape context and stand-level management practices on tick densities, (4) misidentified (i.e., non-tick) specimens submitted by citizen scientists, (5) tick-borne disease risk perception and land management decision-making by citizen scientists. These manuscripts will be led by various personnel including Ballman, Gardner, Hurd, and Urcuqui. We have hired a Master's student in entomology (Alyssa Marini) to lead additional ecological data collection under the supervision of PD Gardner. Marini's thesis research will expand the scope of the study to encompass the impacts of active forest management on mosquito ecology and mosquito-host interactions, introducing consideration of other arthropod disease vector species and building upon previous research conducted by Gardner concerning the effects of invasive plants on mosquito ecology.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? For our biophysical research, we published a paper in the journal EcoHealth demonstrating that recently harvested forest land, i.e., harvested within the past five years, has lower tick densities compared to a positive control, i.e., not harvested within the past 20 years, and identified low rodent and deer densities as a potential mechanism to explain this pattern. We finished a second field season of tick data collection in a randomized complete block design study with three treatments (i.e., no harvest within the past 20 years, low harvest intensity, and high harvest intensity) and five blocks (i.e., towns in southern Maine) to test the hypothesis that harvest intensity alters tick densities and tick-borne disease transmission dynamics. As part of this study, we conducted overstory and understory forest measurements, deployed iButton data loggers to collect microclimate data, collected off-host ticks using the drag sampling technique, and deployed motion-triggered cameras to characterize deer presence. Preliminary data analysis suggests that higher harvest intensity (i.e., lower basal area and lower trees per acre) reduces densities of blacklegged ticks. We initiated a new field study of the impacts of timber harvesting on the ecology and behavior of small mammal reservoir hosts for tick-borne pathogens. As part of this study, we are conducting live-trapping of small mammals in high harvest intensity and unharvested control plots, estimating small mammal population size, quantifying small mammal tick burdens, and quantifying small mammal pathogen infection prevalence. We also are conducting "giving up density" behavioral assays to assess the extent to which timber harvesting may alter small mammal foraging behavior and tick-host encounter frequency. We initiated a new field study of the impacts of forest fragmentation at the landscape scale on tick densities and pathogen infection prevalence. Using GIS and remote sensing, we located 20 experimental units spanning a range of patch sizes, isolation, and functional and structural connectivity in southern Maine and have visited these sites biweekly to collect ticks and monitor the activity of deer and potential predators of small mammals using trail cameras. This study will be continued for a second field season next year. We developed and launched the Maine Forest Tick Survey, a citizen science study that seeks to understand linkages between forest management and ticks and tick-borne pathogens. We completed the first year of the project in 2020 and are currently in the middle of the second year. Over two years, we recruited over 300 volunteer landowners across nine counties in Maine. Volunteers collected ticks from their wooded properties using drag cloths three times in July and filled out surveys concerning their land management history, knowledge of ticks and tick-borne pathogens, and motivation for participating in citizen science. We identified all collected ticks to species and tested blacklegged tick nymphs for the three most common tick-borne pathogens in the region (Borrelia burgdorferi, Anaplasma phagocytophilum, and Babesia microti). Preliminary analyses of the citizen science data collected during the first year of the study revealed correlations between recency of timber harvest, presence of invasive plants, and tick densities. Properties that had a timber harvest anytime in the last 20 years had significantly fewer ticks than those that have not had a timber harvest in over 20 years (Χ2 = 14.71, df = 1, p = 0.005). Properties with invasive plants had significantly more blacklegged tick nymphs than properties without invasive plants (Z = 4.93, p < 0.0001). These findings may contribute to development of practical guidelines to manage tick-borne disease risk through forestry. For our social science research, one of our major goals was to explore the human dimensions of Lyme disease and develop insight into the ways in which two particularly vulnerable populations think about and respond to the current landscape of Lyme disease risk. While the current literature has documented the knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of general populations in endemic communities, minimal research has been conducted among populations that frequently engage with peridomestic landscapes for recreational or occupational purposes. This research aimed to fill that gap, by characterizing the psychosocial determinants of recreationists' preventative behaviors as well as the economic, environmental, and social factors that drive private woodland owners (PWOs) management decisions. In doing so, this research lends itself to a wide array of disease management efforts. Results from the prevention component that focused on recreationalists, examined the determinants of three prominent Lyme disease preventative behaviors: wearing protective clothing, applying repellents, and performing a tick check. Our analyses established self-efficacy, method efficacy, risk, and benefits as key determinants in recreationists' adoption of Lyme disease preventative behavior. In contrast, tick-related knowledge and experience demonstrated no such significant influence. These theory-based findings contradict traditional public health practices that have historically focused on awareness-raising education initiatives to promote preventative behaviors. Such practices are in vain without an adequate understanding of how these psychosocial factors are translated into behavior. The proposed preventative behavior models varied minimally in their degree of predictive capability, ranging from 41.4% to 52.3% explained variance, suggesting that the conceptual framework used in this research may be viable for Lyme disease prevention applications. Results from the management component, focusing on PWOs, demonstrated PWOs possess well-rounded knowledge of ticks and Lyme disease, with one-half of respondents correctly answering six or more of the nine knowledge questions. Despite demonstrated knowledge of and experience with ticks and Lyme disease, only 19.9% of PWOs reported being aware of any management strategies aimed at reducing Lyme disease on wooded land. This knowledge gap was further highlighted by the various, incongruent strategies reported by PWOs. PWOs described a variety of management strategies ranging from pesticide application to grass maintenance to deer population management. While many strategies described offer some mitigating potential, the fact remains that in no case did awareness of any single strategy exceed 5.7% of the study population. Our results also corroborate anecdotal evidence that PWOs in this region frequently encounter ticks, as nearly all respondents (98.2%) reported having found a tick in their home or on one of their pets and 94.5% having previously been bitten by a tick. Moreover, our results show that more than one in four respondents (26.1%) had personally contracted Lyme disease previously. However, given that our results did not reveal any association between PWOs' level of experience with ticks and Lyme disease and their engagement in activities on their property, channels of Lyme disease exposure may be less directly predictable than anticipated. Overall, our findings confirmed PWOs' shared interest in Lyme disease land management strategies but revealed specific barriers that dissuade PWOs from engaging in said strategies on their own non-industrial, small-scale private woodlands. The success of future Lyme disease land management strategies will depend upon the ability and willingness of agencies and authorities to address these barriers and help PWOs realize mitigating strategies on their own properties.

Publications

• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2021 Citation: E Ballman, AM Gardner, J Leahy, C Sponarski. Community scientists are key to understanding the effect of private forest landowner management decisions on ticks and tick-borne pathogens. Citizen Science Association annual meeting, virtual. May 2021.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2021 Citation: AM Gardner. Ecological drivers of tick-borne disease exposure risk in Maine. Maine Biological and Medical Sciences Symposium, virtual. 30 April 2021.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2021 Citation: E Ballman, AM Gardner, J Leahy, C Sponarski. Using community science to study the effect of private forest landowner management decisions on ticks and tick-borne pathogens. Entomological Society of America Eastern Branch annual meeting, virtual. 22-24 March 2021.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2020 Citation: SN Hurd, L Kenefic, J Leahy, C Sponarski, AM Gardner. The effects of timber harvesting on Ixodes scapularis densities and tick-borne pathogen transmission. Entomological Society of America annual meeting, virtual. 11-25 November 2020.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2020 Citation: AM Gardner. Tick-borne disease ecology and management in Maine. Entomological Society of America annual meeting, virtual. 11-25 November 2020.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2020 Citation: E Ballman, AM Gardner, J Leahy, C Sponarski. The effect of private forest landowner management decisions on ticks and tick-borne pathogens. Entomological Society of America annual meeting, virtual. 11-25 November 2020.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2020 Citation: AM Gardner. Tick talk: Understanding the ecological drivers of the emergence of Lyme disease in Maine. Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, virtual. 19 October 2020.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2020 Citation: AM Gardner. Ecological and social drivers of the spread of vector-borne diseases. University of Maine Institute of Medicine, Orono, ME. 16 October 2020.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: CE Conte, JE Leahy, and AM Gardner. 2021. Active forest management reduces blacklegged tick and tick-borne pathogen exposure risk. EcoHealth. Online ahead of print.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2021 Citation: Olechnowicz, C., Leahy, J., Sponarski, C., Gardner, A. 2021. Assessing the Social Vulnerability of Maine Communities towards Lyme Disease. Presentation at the 27th International Symposium on Society and Resource Management (ISSRM) online.

Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20

Outputs
Target Audience:During the current reporting period, we increased awareness of the Maine Forest Tick Survey project and began disseminating preliminary research results to diverse stakeholder audiences. We established a stakeholder advisory board with membership including representatives of the Maine CDC, Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Maine Forest Service, Maine Woodland Owners, Maine Society of American Foresters, Forest Stewards Guild (Northeast Region), Professional Logging Contractors of Maine, Northeastern Master Logger Program, Maine Land Trust Network, and University of Maine Cooperative Extension. We initiated a citizen science tick surveillance project that enabled additional outreach to 125 private forest landowners. We began to disseminate research findings to scientific audiences via conference presentations and manuscript submissions to peer-reviewed journals. Finally, we communicated about our project with public audiences via media appearances (TV, newspaper, and newsletter). Changes/Problems:Due to the impacts of COVID-19, elements of our ecological field data collection have been delayed or scaled back, including small mammal trapping and reduced off-host tick collection effort because student researchers were not allowed to live off-campus in field housing according to university policies. We delayed the hiring of a scientific outreach specialist due to events and outreach opportunities around the state being cancelled due to the pandemic, delayed the hiring of a postdoctoral researcher, and delayed a graduate student intensive workshop that is intended to expose graduate students around the region to resilient agroecosystems research because we could not hold this event in-person this year. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Four graduate students and three undergraduate students were involved in this project during the reporting period. Each is receiving training and mentoring commensurate with their role in the project and professional objectives, including completing Responsible Conduct of Research training. Christine Conte (graduated December 2019) and Stephanie Hurd are Master's and PhD students in Ecology and Environmental Sciences, respectively, leading the field ecology components of the project, and they are mentored primarily by PD Gardner in disease ecology research. The students also have been trained in forest measurement techniques by co-PD Kenefic and tick-borne pathogen testing techniques by co-PD Lichtenwalner. Danielle Donadio is an undergraduate student in Wildlife Ecology who assisted Hurd in disease ecology field work over the summer. Katie Perry is a Master's student in Ecology and Environmental Sciences leading social science research concerning individual (i.e., recreationist and forest landowner) tick-borne disease awareness and risk prevention strategies, and she is mentored primarily by co-PD Sponarski in human dimensions research. Erin Gilmore and Carolyn Ziegra are undergraduate students in Wildlife Ecology who have assisted Perry in social science field work over the summer. Casey Olechnowicz is a PhD student in Forest Resources leading social science research concerning community tick-borne disease awareness and risk management, and he is mentored primarily by co-PD Leahy. During the current reporting period, Elissa Ballman was hired as the citizen science coordinator for the project under the supervision of PD Gardner. All participants have participated in regular team meetings and will lead data analysis and dissemination of research findings as the project matures. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We established a stakeholder advisory board with membership including representatives of the Maine CDC, Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Maine Forest Service, Maine Woodland Owners, Maine Society of American Foresters, Forest Stewards Guild (Northeast Region), Professional Logging Contractors of Maine, Northeastern Master Logger Program, Maine Land Trust Network, and University of Maine Cooperative Extension. We held our first stakeholder advisory board meeting in January 2020 in Augusta, ME. We initiated a citizen science tick surveillance project that enabled additional outreach to 125 private forest landowners. We began to disseminate research findings to scientific audiences via conference presentations to interdisciplinary audiences and manuscript submissions to peer-reviewed journals. Finally, we communicated about our project with public audiences via media appearances (TV, newspaper, and newsletter). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Data analysis of both surveys will be completed. Our social science MS student will be finishing and defending her thesis. We will begin new social science research with a content analysis of Maine tick communication sources, and complete GIS social vulnerability of Maine communities to Lyme disease map. Finally, we will carry out qualitative interviews of rural school nurses, and their tick and Lyme disease strategies. We anticipate 2-3 manuscripts to be prepared and submitted in the upcoming year related to social science research. During the next ecological field data collection season, we will seek to clarify the impacts of timber harvesting intensity on the abundance and behavior of small mammal hosts for tick-borne pathogens and we will conduct blacklegged tick off-host survival assays to complement our studies of microclimate conditions under different harvesting treatments. We anticipate that we will submit a manuscript based on these research efforts. We will complete the meta-analysis analyzing the impacts of active forest management practices on tick-borne pathogen transmission. We anticipate an additional manuscript to be prepared and submitted related to this research effort. We will complete tick identifications and tick-borne pathogen testing for samples collected during the first year of our citizen science project and we will enroll an additional minimum of 125 new participants for the second season of the citizen science project. We will create personalized reports for all citizen scientists involved in the project to provide information concerning tick-borne disease in the region and the unique risks that exist on individual participants' forest properties.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Two quantitative survey instruments were designed using a combination of health behavior constructs to assess Lyme disease preventative behaviors across two vulnerable populations. Data for this research was collected in southern Maine, an area with a high incidence of Lyme disease (LD) that is only projected to rise as the effects of climate change make the region more hospitable for disease transmission. Two different human populations were sampled: (1) recreationists and (2) private woodland owners. The first survey instrument was designed to assess the factors influencing the preventative behaviors of recreationists. Recreationist data was collected using an intercept survey method at Bradbury Mountain State Park, a popular recreation destination for both in-state and out-of-state visitors (n=401). Regression analysis is in the final stages of completion for this dataset. Preliminary results demonstrate the importance of perceived self-efficacy in the adoption of preventative behavior, supporting the inclusion of this construct in future health behavior models. In contrast to traditional public health outreach initiatives, tick-related knowledge and experience did not have a strong influence on individual preventative behavior. The dissemination of this information will help to inform researchers and public health officials alike. The second survey instrument was designed to assess the factors influencing private woodland owners' personal preventative behaviors and land management decisions related to Lyme disease. Data collection for this portion of the project began in October 2019 and concluded in May 2020. In total, surveys were administered to private woodland owners in 8 towns in Cumberland County. Individuals owning 10 acres of land or more were surveyed using drop-off pick-up or mailing survey methods (n=300). Due to the COVID-19 concerns, drop-off pick-up methods were postponed for 7 of the towns that were scheduled to be surveyed this spring. This latter portion of data collection will likely be completed this fall. Preliminary data analysis is currently underway for the surveys that have been completed thus far. We submitted a manuscript to the journal EcoHealth demonstrating that recently harvested forest land, i.e., harvested within the past five years, has lower tick densities compared to a positive control, i.e., not harvested within the past 20 years (df = 4; Z = 2.97; P < 0.01), and identified low rodent and deer densities as a potential mechanism to explain this pattern. We conducted a second field season of tick data collection in a randomized complete block design study with three treatments (i.e., no harvest within the past 20 years, low harvest intensity, and high harvest intensity) and three blocks (i.e., towns in southern Maine) to test the hypothesis that harvest intensity alters tick densities and tick-borne disease transmission dynamics. As part of this study, we conducted overstory and understory forest measurements, deployed iButton data loggers to collect microclimate data, collected off-host ticks using the drag sampling technique, and deployed motion-triggered cameras to characterize deer presence. Preliminary data analysis is currently underway for the data collected thus far. The citizen science component of the project, the Maine Forest Tick Survey, began in the summer of 2020. We recruited volunteers for the project through a social media campaign, press release, and news articles. Over 300 individuals expressed interest in volunteering for the Maine Forest Tick Survey. Of those, we selected 122 individuals and 5 land trusts with a wide range of forest management histories to participate in 2020. We held online webinars to train our volunteers and dropped off supplies and instructions to all participants. Our volunteers are collecting ticks from their wooded properties three times in July using a drag cloth. We currently are in the process of identifying all collected ticks to species and will test a subset of blacklegged ticks from each property for tick-borne pathogens during the winter. In addition to collecting ticks, our volunteers filled out surveys about their forest management histories, knowledge of ticks and tick-borne pathogens, attitudes and beliefs about Lyme disease, and motivation for participating in citizen science. We began to conduct a meta-analysis investigating the impacts of multiple active forest management practices (i.e., invasive plant removal, prescribed burns, timber harvesting) on density of nymphal ticks and nymphal tick pathogen infection prevalence in temperate North American and European landscapes. We have identified about 75 peer-reviewed journal articles for inclusion in the meta-analysis through a Web of Science keyword search and a screening protocol conducted according to PRISMA meta-analysis standards. We currently are in the process of extracting effect sizes from the articles. This meta-analysis will explore a range of management practices as well as investigate the impact of time since management was conducted on tick-borne disease ecology.

Publications

• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2020 Citation: Leahy, J., Olechnowicz, C., Perry, K., Sponarski, C., Gardner, A., Conte, C., and Hurd, S. 2020. Will Family Forest Owners Change Forest Management Practices to Reduce Ticks and Tick-Borne Diseases? Presentation to the Minnesota Society of American Foresters, February 2020, Bemidji, MN.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2020 Citation: Olechnowicz, C., Leahy, J., Sponarski, C., Gardner, A., Rickard, L., McGreavy, B. 2020. Tackling Lyme Disease in Maine: Using Perceived Vulnerability and Source Credibility to Predict Response Efficacy to Tick Management Options. Presentation to the International Symposium for Society & Resource Management, July, 2020, Virtual.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2020 Citation: Perry, K., Sponarski, C., Leahy, J., Gardner, A. 2020. Acting Out of Lyme: Characterizing the Human Dimensions of Lyme Disease Prevention and Management. Guest Lecture Presentation for Memorial University of Newfoundland - Outdoor Recreation and Society (HKR 3555), May, 2020, Virtual.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Hurd, S., Kenefic, L., Leahy, J., Richley, A., Sponarski, C., Gardner, A. 2019. The effects of timber harvesting on Ixodes scapularis abundance and Lyme disease transmission. Entomological Society of America annual meeting, November 2019, St. Louis, MO.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2020 Citation: Gardner AM. Impacts of Forest Management on Tick-Borne Disease Transmission and Exposure Risk. Northeastern IPM Center webinar, May 2020, virtual.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2020 Citation: CE Conte, JE Leahy, and AM Gardner. Active forest management reduces blacklegged tick and tick-borne pathogen exposure risk. EcoHealth. Submitted 6/12/2020.

Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/19

Outputs
Target Audience:During the current reporting period, our efforts focused on building collaborations with the Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine. We also have conducted outreach presentations to local interest groups (e.g., Maine Master Naturalists, Orono Bog Walk, Friends of Dr. Edith Patch) to increase awareness of the project and begin disseminating preliminary research results. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Four graduate students and four undergraduate students currently are involved in this project. Each is receiving training and mentoring commensurate with their role in the project and professional objectives, including completing Responsible Conduct of Research training. Christine Conte and Stephanie Hurd are Master's and PhD students in Ecology and Environmental Sciences, respectively, leading the field ecology components of the project, and they are mentored primarily by PD Gardner in disease ecology research. The students also have been trained in forest measurement techniques by co-PD Kenefic and tick-borne pathogen testing techniques by co-PD Lichtenwalner. Rose Crispin, Jocelyn Ferraro, and Matthew Goldsmith are undergraduate student in Zoology and Wildlife Ecology who have assisted Conte and Hurd in disease ecology field work over the summer. Katie Perry is a Master's student in Forest Resources leading social science research concerning individual (i.e., recreationist and forest landowner) tick-borne disease awareness and risk prevention strategies, and she is mentored primarily by co-PDs Sponarski and Leahy in human dimensions research. Erin Gilmore is an undergraduate student in Wildlife Ecology who has assisted Perry in social science field work over the summer. Casey Olechnowicz is a PhD student in Forest Resources leading social science research concerning community tick-borne disease awareness and risk management, and he is mentored primarily by co-PD Leahy. All graduate students have participated in regular team meetings and will lead data analysis and dissemination of research findings as the project matures. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?During the current reporting period, we have delivered three conference presentations from this research to interdisciplinary audiences (i.e., Entomological Society of America annual meeting, New England Fish and Wildlife Conference, International Symposium on Society and Resource Management), and an additional abstract has been accepted for a future presentation. We have developed relationships with collaborators in the Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine that will guide the research process and ensure practical relevance of our efforts. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Hire a scientific research specialist (Ann Bryant) to lead tick-borne pathogen testing efforts, a citizen science coordinator (Elissa Ballman) to lead the citizen science components of the project, and an outreach coordinator (to be determined) to lead public outreach efforts; Convene our stakeholder advisory group for a meeting to introduce the project and initial research findings from the past summer; Initiate the citizen science component of the project, which entails training private landowners to collect ticks on their own properties for submission to the investigators; Initiate the outreach component of the project, which entails leading events to educate forest workers and recreationists about tick-borne disease risk management; For ecological research, conduct a second summer field season examining the impacts of timber harvesting intensity on tick-borne disease transmission dynamics; Begin testing ticks collected through field ecology efforts for three tick-borne pathogens that occur in Maine (i.e., Borrelia burgdorferi, Babesia microti, Anaplasma phagocytophilum) using a multiplex PCR assay; For social science research, analyze data using the Health Belief Model and Social Cognitive Theory constructs and prepare a manuscript on individual attitudes to tick-borne disease; Conduct qualitative interviews regarding community perceptions of vulnerability to tick-borne disease with an environmental justice emphasis, and initiate an environmental justice GIS analysis of social vulnerability to tick-borne disease in Maine.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Hired four graduate students and four undergraduate students; Applied for and received IRB and IACUC approval for social science and natural science research, respectively; Conducted initial collaborative efforts with Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine Land Trust partners to identify study sites for field research efforts; Developed collaboration with scientists at the UMaine Cooperative Extension Veterinary Diagnostic Lab to facilitate tick-borne pathogen testing research; For ecological research, conducted a pilot field season in summer 2018 demonstrating that recently harvested forest land, i.e., harvested within the past five years, has lower tick densities compared to a positive control, i.e., not harvested within the past 20 years (df = 4; Z = 2.97; P < 0.01), and identified low rodent and deer densities as a potential mechanism to explain this pattern; Established a randomized complete block design study with three treatments (i.e., no harvest within the past 20 years, low harvest intensity, and high harvest intensity) and three blocks (i.e., towns in southern Maine) to test the hypothesis that harvest intensity alters tick densities and tick-borne disease transmission dynamics; Conducted overstory and understory forest measurements, deployed iButton data loggers to collect microclimate data, collected off-host ticks using the drag sampling technique, deployed motion-triggered cameras to characterize large mammal presence, and deployed Sherman live traps to estimate small mammal population size; For social science research, developed two quantitative survey instruments using a combination of health behavior constructs to assess Lyme disease preventative behaviors across two vulnerable populations (i.e., recreationists and forest landowners); Collected survey data at Bradbury State Park via the in-person intercept method and in the town of New Gloucester using the drop-off pick-up method; Conducted qualitative interviews with tick-borne disease experts exploring their own perceptions of tick-borne disease risk and their beliefs about community tick-borne disease risk perceptions; Developed a quantitative scale to measure perceived vulnerability to tick-borne disease, perceived efficacy of tick management strategies, and social trust in institutions managing ticks, and incorporated this scale into intercept and drop-off pick-up surveys described above.

Publications

• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Conte C and A Gardner. The effects of timber harvest on Lyme disease transmission in Maine. Entomological Society of America annual meeting, Vancouver, Canada. November 2018.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Conte C and A Gardner. The effects of timber harvest on Lyme disease transmission in Maine. New England Fish and Wildlife Conference, Groton, CT. April 2019.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Olechnowicz C, J Leahy, C Sponarski, A Gardner, L Rickard, and B McGreavy. A proposal to examine tick related communication and perceived vulnerability towards Lyme disease in Maine. 25th International Symposium on Society and Resource Management, Oshkosh, WI. June 2019.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Hurd S, L Kenefic, J Leahy, A Richley, C Sponarski, and A Gardner. The effects of timber harvest on Ixodes scapularis abundance and Lyme disease transmission. Entomological Society of America annual meeting, St. Louis, MO. November 2019.