Teaching aerobiology from a geographical perspective

Geography is a late comer as an affiliated field to aerobiology. Even if it seems obvious that aerobiology is above all a biogeographical science - and that its roots, micrography, were indeed related to habitats characterization - it has not been generally used as an analytical tool, but rather as a descriptive vocabulary. However, recent advances in aerobiology, such as long range dispersal studies, lead us to believe that geographical thinking will be an important part of modern aerobiology. This paper will present the most promising aspects of aerobiology where geography can play an important role. These can be regrouped in three different endeavors: 1) optimization of aerobiological data by adding, through GIS, geographical linked information, called weight, to the biological atmospheric content that could help define their representativeness; 2) making a joint decision on data sets coming from spatially determined synchronous stations can give us supplementary information on data dispersal and heterogeneity. Space, through variograms, is information, that, as all information, can be statistically tested; 3) adding time to space we have movement. It is only by considering space variables that we will be able to model and map paths of airborne dispersed biological particles.