EcoHealth 7, 448–458, 2010 DOI: 10.1007/s10393-010-0672-8 Original Contribution 2011 The Author(s). This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Flying Over an Infected Landscape: Distribution of Highly Pathogenic Avian Inﬂuenza H5N1 Risk in South Asia and Satellite Tracking of Wild Waterfowl Marius Gilbert,1,2 Scott H. Newman,3 John Y. Takekawa,4 Leo Loth,5 Chandrashekhar Biradar,6 Diann J. Prosser,7,8 Sivananinthaperumal Balachandran,9 Mandava Venkata Subba Rao,5 Taej Mundkur,10 Baoping Yan,11 Zhi Xing,12 Yuansheng Hou,12 Nyambayar Batbayar,13 Tseveenmayadag Natsagdorj,14 Lenny Hogerwerf,1,15 Jan Slingenbergh,5 and Xiangming Xiao6 1Biological Control and Spatial Ecology, Universit´e Libre de Bruxelles CP160/12, Av FD Roosevelt 50, 1050 Brussels, Belgium 2Fonds National de la Recherche Scientiﬁque, Brussels, Belgium 3EMPRES Wildlife Unit, Animal Production and Health Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy 4U.S. Geological Survey Western Ecological Research Center, Vallejo, CA 5Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy 6University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 7U.S. Geological Survey Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Beltsville, MD 8University of Maryland, College Park, MD 9Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India 10Wetlands International, Wageningen, The Netherlands 11Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 12Qinghai Lake National Nature Reserve, Xining, China 13Wildlife Science and Conservation Center, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia 14Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia 15Division of Epidemiology, Department of Farm Animal Health, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands Abstract: Highly pathogenic avian inﬂuenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus persists in Asia, posing a threat to poultry, wild birds, and humans. Previous work in Southeast Asia demonstrated that HPAI H5N1 risk is related to domestic ducks and people. Other studies discussed the role of migratory birds in the long distance spread of HPAI H5N1. However, the interplay between local persistence and long-distance dispersal has never been studied. We expand previous geospatial risk analysis to include South and Southeast Asia, and integrate the analysis with migration data of satellite-tracked wild waterfowl along the Central Asia ﬂyway. We ﬁnd that the population of domestic duck is the main factor delineating areas at risk of HPAI H5N1 spread in domestic poultry in South Asia, and that other risk factors, such as human population and chicken density, are associated with HPAI H5N1 risk within those areas. We also ﬁnd that satellite tracked birds (Ruddy Shelduck and two Bar-headed Geese) reveal a direct spatio-temporal link between the HPAI H5N1 hot-spots identiﬁed in India and Bangladesh through our risk model, and the wild bird outbreaks in May–June–July 2009 in China Electronic supplementary material: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/ s10393-010-0672-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Published online: January 26, 2011 Correspondence to: Marius Gilbert, e-mail: mgilbert@ulb.ac.be