Mapping of Anopheles Species Vector Mosquitoes Breeding Habitats and the Longitudinal Trends of Malaria Pf Prevalence in Association with Climate and Environmental Determinants Using Remote Sensing and GIS

Abstract

Malaria is a major public health problem in the Eastern, and North-Eastern region including Assam. The present study area is Kokrajhar district of Assam state is known as an endemic district for several decades, with an increasing number of malaria incidence and fatalities reported for the past 25 years, and it is known as the hotspot malaria endemic region in the state. The presence of Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax, both of which pose considerable public health risks of malaria transmission. The problem is being exacerbated by the district's landscape nature, which includes lush forests, wetlands, and agricultural fields, provides a potential breeding sources with conducive environment for mosquitos fecundity, especially, the existence of dense vegetation, wet irrigation agriculture crop lands, elevation, soil moistures, water features, land use/land covers, water pools, rivers and streams etc., This district has suitable climate condition with high temperatures, precipitation and high humidity which are supporting malaria transmission throughout the year. A significant correlation was obtained with the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), Normalised Soil Moisture Index (NSMI), Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Land Surface Temperature (LST) are analysed to assess the potential malaria vectors breeding grounds, such as;  agricultural crop lands (current fallow lands) 77 %, perennial water features 11.32 %, wet irrigation crop lands 11.54 %, health vegetation with holding high water contents < 1%, accordingly, calculate the area suitable for malaria vector breeding is 22.86 % of the total area support for the breeding vector mosquitoes in the summer season, and during the monsoon and winter accounted into > 90% of the area favourable for Anopheles genus vector mosquito breeding, and are having significant spatial association with malaria Pf prevalence in the hyper endemic region.