With the Google Earth data visualization project, Janies says, researchers can look at how the more dangerous variants of H5N1 have emerged so that they can develop biological control strategies. Resources to solve the problem are limited, Janies notes, and some potential solutions–such as stopping all migratory birds–are simply impossible. The virtual map could show researchers the best ways to focus their efforts.
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a virtual globe is worth a thousand pictures,” says Robert Guralnick, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who worked on the virtual-mapping project.
A web of lines superimposed on the Google Earth globe shows the various genotypes of H5N1. Each line is color-coded to correspond to a kind of host, such as waterfowl, shorebirds, mammals, or raptors. The researchers say that by looking at the timing and location of different known mutations, they were able to investigate different hypotheses about which animals are responsible for spreading the virus.
Andrew Hill, chief architect of the visualization project, says that one question he and his colleagues explored was whether the virus was being moved by migratory birds, such as waterfowl, or nonmigratory ones, such as chickens. “We found that’s a really difficult question to answer,” says Hill. “It depends on what [geographic] region you’re talking about and what year.”
A short animation of the H5N1 geomapping.
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