Date of this Version Directly transmitted infectious diseases
spread through wildlife populations as travelling waves away
from the sites of original introduction. These waves often
become distorted through their interaction with environmental
and population heterogeneities and by long-distance
translocation of infected individuals. Accurate a priori
predictions of travelling waves of infection depend upon
understanding and quantifying these distorting factors. We
assess the effects of anisotropies arising from the orientation
of rivers in relation to the direction of disease-front
propagation and the damming effect of mountains on disease
movement in natural populations. The model successfully predicts
the local and large-scale prevaccination spread of raccoon
rabies through New York State, based on a previous spatially
heterogeneous model of raccoon-rabies invasion across the state
of Connecticut. Use of this model provides a rare example of a
priori prediction of an epidemic invasion over a naturally heter