Tick-borne illnesses are trending upward and are an increasing source of risks to people’s health in the United States. Thus, it is imperative to find a practical way of managing tick populations. Prescribed burns are a common form of land management, it can be cost efficient if properly managed and can be applied across large amounts of land. In this seminar, I will present a spatial stage-structured tick-host model with impulsive differential equations to investigate the effect of prescribed fire intensity, and the duration between burns on tick population and disease prevalence. Results indicate that fire intensity has a larger impact in reducing tick population than frequency between burns. Furthermore, burning at high intensity is preferable to burning at low intensity whenever possible. Exploring the use of prescribed burns in preventing the establishment of ticks into new areas shows that fewer burns are ineffective at preventing their establishment because ticks can recover relatively quickly following a burn. While frequent, long-term prescribed burns slow the propagation of ticks, their eventual establishment is inevitable, and the additional use of other tick population management strategies is necessary to prevent their establishment. Bio: Dr. Agusto got a PhD. in Mathematics from the University of Ilorin in Nigeria. She was a trained applied mathematician based in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas. Her work focuses on designing novel models to gain insight on the emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases of public health importance and how to mitigate the risks they pose to human health. She has designed and analyzed novel models for diseases like Ebola, avian influenza, bovine tuberculosis, Johnes disease, toxplasmagondii, Chikungunya, and malaria. Her current works are on modeling tick-borne disease across the Great Plains, and understanding the role of human behavior on the transmission of COVID-19. She is also involved in capacity building across West Africa by organizing summer schools in mathematical biology and ecology. She has organized summer schools in Benin, Senegal, and Nigeria, and currently seeking funds for a school in Ghana for 2022 Summer.

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