Editor’s Introduction

Abstract

Editor’s Introduction Hilda E. Kurtz and Deepak R. Mishra The papers in Volume 58 Issue 4 of Southeastern Geographer each address, in some way, the passage of time. The papers operationalize attention to the passage of time in different ways. Bright et al. examine the degrees of human recovery three years after a natural hazard in Alabama. Burris et al. mine data from detailed log-books to investigate changing weather and related growing patterns over time from an antebellum Virginia plantation. Hanes’ historical geography of the oyster industry in antebellum Virginia argues for the relevance of even failed policies in the distant past for contemporary political sensibilities. Engström analyzes hydropower generation through time in three southeastern river basins with high inter-annual rainfall—with concommitant limits on ability to generate hydropower—and relates to indirect measure of development pressures surrounding the reservoirs created by the dams. In the context of a period of numerous high-profile environmental disasters, Bright, Sayre, Hanks, and Bagley’s paper “Social Vulnerability and Perceptions of Recovery from the 2011 Tuscaloosa Tornado” is timely. Bright et al. interviewed more than 200 people approximately three years after the E4 tornado affected their homes and lives to investigate the degrees of recovery achieved. They argue for parsing recovery or achieving a “new normal” into both time frame and degree of recovery. After watching the destruction from Hurricane Florence in the Carolinas and Hurricane Matthew in the Florida panhandle through September and October 2018, Bright et al.’s research results remind us the recovery time of those caught in the track of catastrophic storms is much longer than public attention, as those impacted by last year’s storms pummeling Houston and Puerto Rico will surely attest. In “Plantation Records as a Source of Historical Weather and Agricultural Data”, Burris, Elsner and Doel data mined plantation log books from the Shirley Plantation in Virginia. Before standardized instrumentation measurement, weather and related human activities were recorded in handwritten log books, in elaborate and idiosyncratic cursive. Plantation log books were important to planters’ efforts to acquire capital, because they documented the success of experimental agricultural ventures in a world and climate unfamiliar to European planters in what is now the United States. Converting hand-written log books to a searchable digital database is time-intensive and requires patience and diligence. Such records can provide broader scale (decadal) quantitative data. (Similar handwritten logs exist throughout the world for both sailing vessels and large-scale colonial enterprises well beyond the southeastern United States). [End Page 325] Significantly, the time period documented in the log books in question was a time of experimental agriculture during which growers lacked in-depth knowledge of local weather patterns. As the southeastern region of the United States experiences unfamiliar weather events, historical studies of experimental agriculture and cultivars may provide adaptive insights for present and future growers. Hanes’ historical geography of the oyster industry in Virginia considers policy attempts to regulate and stimulate segments of the state’s economy. Hanes argues for an Atlantic perspective on southern historical geography, which considers events and conditions in the southern states in the context of economic, political and cultural relations across the broader Atlantic world. Hanes examines the ways in which White fear of the relative autonomy of Black oyster fishermen shaped the trajectory of the oyster trade in Virginia, with reverberations in the present day. Engström looks at the indirect management impacts of development on the “lakes” created by damming rivers in the southern Appalachian region. Natural lakes in the region are non-existent, but reservoirs are created by dams along the many rivers flowing from the one of the oldest mountain chains in the world. The reservoirs included in the study were created along major rivers, with the primary purpose of providing hydroelectric power. Secondarily, the reservoirs created lake-front residential development opportunities marketed as second-home or full-time living. The study investigates the natural and anthropogenic drivers affecting hydropower potential. This is particularly important in a region that can have episodes of drought, which limit both hydropower generation and the access of surrounding landowners to the reservoir. The paper offers insight into how management of...