Student Research Reports
The Correlation Between Annual Precipitation and West Nile Virus in the United States
Country:United States of America
Student(s):Christine Nam, Julianna Pledgie, and Grace Toman
Grade Level:Secondary School (grades 9-12, ages 14-18)
GLOBE Educator(s):Cassie Soeffing
Contributors:Dr. Rusty Low, IGES, scientist
Peder Nelson, OSU, sme
Dr. Erika Podest, NASA JPL, scientist
Andrew Clark, IGES, EO Researcher and Data Analyst
Report Type(s):International Virtual Science Symposium Report, Mission Mosquito Report
Protocols:Earth As a System, Mosquitoes
Presentation Video:
View Video
Presentation Poster:
View Document
Language(s):English
Date Submitted:01/23/2023
Two affairs the United States is currently faced with are the spread of West Nile virus, a vector-borne disease contracted when bitten by an infected mosquito, and increasing precipitation rates. A calculated correlation of the two variables, precipitation and West Nile virus, allows for the acknowledgement of their general relationship and potential applications towards educational outreach, funding, and additional resources in regards to public health and West Nile virus prevention. In order to achieve a numerical value to define the proposed relationship, annual precipitation amounts for each U.S. state were recorded from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Center for Environmental Information and annual West Nile virus case amounts for each U.S. state were recorded from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data was then analyzed with the Pearson correlation coefficient to reveal a weak and inverse correlation of -0.233. The correlation outcome indicates that precipitation amount alone has little affect on the spread of West Nile virus, and too many external variables could have affected the results, as each U.S. state has very diverse environmental and ecological factors- including surface temperature, biodiversity, population density, and geographic and climatic characteristics. No definite correlation can be concluded by this research, however, it is recommended that additional research and environmental modeling be completed to understand how precipitation affects the spread of West Nile virus within a smaller and more remote study site.
Keywords : West Nile virus, precipitation, correlation, educational outreach, public health