Pollen allergies afflict over 35 million Americans, and the economic cost of treating these allergies exceeds 12 billion dollars annually. The effects on human health are considerable because pollen exposure can trigger potentially fatal asthma exacerbations. Despite the importance of these public health concerns, urban areas are filled with plants that produce allergenic pollen, many of which are intentionally cultivated without consideration of their roles in allergies. This preventable situation is caused by a lack of knowledge concerning: 1) how pollen production and dispersal from individual plants leads to heterogeneity in airborne allergenic pollen concentrations on small spatial scales (e.g., tens of meters to kilometers); and 2) the extent to which exposure to allergenic pollen is responsible for triggering asthma attacks and other respiratory symptoms. My objective is to quantify these processes and link allergenic pollen producing plants to human health with mechanistic models.
Oak flowering phenology in the Detroit metropolitan region in spring 2017 (Katz et al. 2019)
Postdoctoral research projects at the University of Michigan:
- Ragweed niche modeling
- Identification of trees within Detroit using remote sensing data
- Development of allometric equations for pollen production by several tree species
- Quantification of flowering phenology using field measurements and remote sensing (see animation on left)
- Parameterization of pollen atmospheric dispersion models
- Predictions and assessments of airborne pollen concentrations
- Epidemiological investigations of pollen exposure
