The Aquaculture Innovation Station (SIA) is a field research station based in Saint-Louis, in the Senegal River valley. We carry out the field work that scientific studies on water, environment and health rely on: data collection, ecological monitoring and interventions.
Our approach: One Health applied to water
The One Health approach treats human, animal and environmental health as a single whole. We work on one specific part of it: aquatic ecosystems — rivers, ponds, rice paddies — and their effects on the health of the people who depend on them.
Where we work
The Senegal River valley is strongly affected by water-related diseases, schistosomiasis in particular, and has been studied for many years. Based in Saint-Louis, we know the sites, the communities and the local stakeholders, which lets us run field campaigns there in good conditions.
Our work
Most of our activity concerns schistosomiasis and the aquatic environments that shape its transmission. Among our recent and ongoing work:
- studying the ecology and control of transmission, as field partner in the DISES project (funded by the NSF), with Cornell, the University of Notre Dame and Stanford;
- an SIA-led project on using drones and artificial intelligence to map at-risk environments, supported by Grand Challenges Canada;
- removing invasive aquatic vegetation at water access points, within an intervention project carried out with Cornell;
- studying rice-fish farming and its effects on health and income.
Our collaborations
We work over the long term with partner universities — Cornell, Notre Dame, Stanford, Rutgers, Emory — and with Université Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, close to our base. Our projects also bring together Senegalese institutions and international scientific partners and funders.
Results
The work we have contributed to has been published in the Nature family of journals: the role of prawn predation in schistosomiasis transmission (Nature Sustainability, 2019), the influence of aquatic vegetation and pollution (Nature, 2023), and the effects of rice-fish farming on health and income (Nature Sustainability, 2026).
Our team
Our work rests on field skills: drone piloting and image processing, malacology, parasitology, ecology, rice-fish farming, and a close relationship with communities. We pay particular attention to data reliability and documented methods.