Dynamics and Spreading Speed of a Reaction-Diffusion System with Advection Modeling West Nile Virus

Abstract: This paper aims to explore the temporal-spatial spreading and asymptotic behaviors of West Nile virus by a reaction-advection-diffusion system with free boundaries, especially considering the impact of advection term on the extinction and persistence of West Nile virus. We define the spatial-temporal risk index $R^{F}_{0}(t)$ with the advection rate and the general basic disease reproduction number $R^D_0$ to get the vanishing-spreading dichotomy regimes of West Nile virus. We show that there exists a threshold value $\mu^{*}$ of the advection rate, and obtain the threshold results of it. When the spreading occurs, we investigate the asymptotic dynamical behaviors of the solution in the long run and first give a sharper estimate that the asymptotic spreading speed of the leftward front is less than the rightward front for $0<\mu<\mu^*$. At last, we give some numerical simulations to identify the significant effects of the advection.