Mosquitoes and other vectors most often are produced in areas of standing water including catch basins, vaults, wastewater treatment plants, water under buildings, horse troughs, pools, ponds, gutters, flood control devices, freshwater and saltwater marshes and wetlands as well as organic waste and debris. The District performs surveillance of adult mosquitoes and surveillance of other vectors in order to discover new sites of larval development, allocation of control efforts, level of public health risk, population densities, and species composition. The District primarily uses New Jersey light traps, Reiter Gravid traps and Carbon Dioxide traps for this surveillance. Through these efforts, the District has successfully identified and controlled new strains of vector-borne disease. For example, through the disease surveillance efforts carried out by the District, a new strain of Hantavirus was detected in the Isla Vista area, appropriately called the “Isla Vista” strain. In another case, the District analyzed several swarms of Honey Bees found in outdoor trash containers located in a Goleta apartment complex. The District’s genetic confirmation found that the Honey Bees were “Africanized.” As a result, the State officially declared the majority of Santa Barbara County to be “colonized.”

Additionally, the District monitors vector-borne diseases in efforts to prevent human cases. Three pathogenic mosquito-borne Encephalitis viruses occur in California: Western Equine Encephalomyelitis, St. Louis Encephalitis and West Nile virus. All three are carried in birds and can be transferred to horses or humans through the bite of an infected mosquito. There is neither a specific cure nor vaccine for these diseases, so the District regularly monitors flocks of sentinel chickens and collects mosquito pools to detect the emergence of these viruses. Malaria, Lyme Disease, and small mammal-borne diseases such as Plague, Hanta Virus and Arena Virus are also monitored.