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Aerobiology studies small particles that can be transported in the air, including biological agents. It involves a variety of fields, including weather patterns, airborne particles, and disease control. Aerobiology is also important for ecology and biodefense.
Aerobiology is a field that focuses on the study of particles that are small enough to be passively transported in the air. These particles are often biological in origin, but this field is not just a subset of biology. Aerobiologists can come from a variety of backgrounds and can apply their knowledge in a variety of ways. For example, the meteorologists who do pollen counts are actually practicing a form of aerobiology.
This field involves the intersection of a number of fields of study. Aerobiologists need to know weather patterns and air behavior, and they also study the nature of airborne particles such as pollen, viruses, dust, and even small organisms such as bacteria and protozoa. Researchers can work in the field, taking air samples to learn more about how things are transported by weather, and they can also get involved in lab work, identifying and studying various particles.
From a health perspective, aerobiology is an important field because a number of disease agents can be airborne. Learning how these particles move can help establish methods that can be used to control the spread of disease. This is also important for agriculture, where aerobiologists observe how fungal spores and bacteria are transferred by air from one field to another. Distributed pollen counts in communities where pollen becomes a health concern in the spring are also the result of aerobiology, with researchers using understanding of how pollen moves to predict where it will be heaviest, so that at people with allergies may be told to avoid these areas.
Research in aerobiology also takes place in the field of ecology. Ecologists study how things like pollen move through an ecosystem and also look at the impact of human-made particles on the natural environment. Soot, for example, is produced as a by-product of industrial processes and can have a profound environmental impact. These researchers also look at organisms in the natural environment that are affected by airborne particles.
Organizations and governments concerned about terrorism also find this field a topic of interest. Aerosolized delivery of biological or chemical weapons could be very dangerous, especially in an urban area. Understanding how chemical and biological agents can be weaponized and distributed in aerosol form can be an important first step in developing biodefense methods that will protect communities from terrorist activity. This area of study is sometimes controversial, as some proponents have pointed out that the development of aerosolized weapons for research can appear very similar to the development of aerosolized weapons for military use.
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