Editors’ Introduction

This issue of Southeastern Geographer once again showcases the diversity and energy of our discipline as it ranges across physical, human and techniques-oriented domains. The papers published here also happen to highlight the underlying attention to time and temporal horizons that marks much contemporary geographic scholarship. Much of what geographers study is dynamic, and in order to investigate shifting environmental and human conditions and processes, we must work at least implicitly within a given time horizon. The papers in this issue remind us that just as geographers work at a range of geographic scales, so do we incorporate understandings of time into our work in different ways and at a range of temporal scales.

Even the essays in this issue remind us of the importance of recognizing change over time. The issue opens with an essay in memoriam to Dr. John Michael (Mike) Harrison, who passed away in November 2015. His longtime friends Chris and Kathleen Meindl invite us to celebrate Mike’s rich and varied life in an essay titled “Always Moving, Always Working with Students: A Tribute to Dr. Mike.” In a commissioned essay titled “The Paris COP21 Climate Conference: What Does It Mean for the Southeast?”, Marshall Shepherd and Pamela Knox look to the future with a reflection on the implications of the Paris Climate Conference for climate-related conditions in the southeastern region of the United States.

In the paper titled “Development of a Geospatial Guide for Responsible Residential Pesticide Application within the South Carolina Coastal Zone,” Lisa Wick-liffe, Dwayne Porter, James Hibbert, Geoffrey Scott, and Chris Marsh make use of real-time data dissemination capability to develop a tool for timing residential pesticide applications. It is well-known that pesticide application in residential settings can adversely impact water quality. Wickliffe et al. developed an interactive GIS tool using real-time weather data as well as land-cover and topographic data to assist residential stakeholders in timing pesticide application to minimize adverse effects on water quality and ecosystem health. The online tool is interactive, requiring no specialized training or software. Thus on the part of the users of the tool, little investment of time is required.

Curtis Prolic and David Goldblum are concerned with the uncertain time horizon of climate change. Their paper “Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Post Oak’s (Quercus stellata) Radial Growth–Climate Relationship” reports on a study to investigate the radial growth response of post oak to predict how this species might respond to future climate. The species is geographically widespread, and current correlations between radial growth and climate parameters vary throughout the species range. The western portion of this species range overlaps with the transition from forest to prairie, which is predicted to be a dynamic ecotone under future climate. Their analysis suggests that the hotter, drier summers predicted for the western portion of this species’ range may decrease growth rates over time.

Ron Kalafsky’s and William Graves’ paper “Reevaluating the Position of Southern Exports on the Global Stage” works implicitly with the time horizon of economic development in a study of export-based manufacturing in southern states. They use an evolutionary economics approach to examine export trends and their economic significance. Kalafsky and Graves focus on the post-NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) period in order to examine the effects of NAFTA on economic development. Their analyses show that individual states have embraced export-oriented manufacturing to different degrees, even while the region as a whole surpasses the national average for “export intensities”. Intriguingly, Kalafsky and Graves question the wisdom of an apparent overreliance on economic development centered on export manufacturers, given the dynamic and unpredictable nature of the global economy.

In “Searching for the Enslaved in the ‘Cradle of Democracy’: Virginia’s James River Plantation Websites and the Reproduction of Local Histories”, Meredith Stone, Ian Spangler, Xavier Griffin, and Stephen Hanna present the results of a study that examines the ways in which histories of slavery and of enslaved persons are effaced in the online promotional materials for twenty-seven James River plantations. Stone et al. use content and discourse analysis to examine the plantations...