Editors’ Introduction

In Volume 57, Issue 3 of the Southeastern Geographer, we are pleased to offer a special issue on “Coastal Seagrass and Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Habitats in the Gulf of Mexico” guest edited by Patrick Biber and Hyun J. Cho. Seagrass and Submerged Aquatic Vegetation (SAV) communities found along the coastlines of northern Gulf of Mexico (GoM) and southeast Atlantic are highly productive coastal ecosystems which provide extremely valuable ecosystem services. These critical ecosystems provide habitat for fish and food resource for waterfowl. They absorb wave energy and prevent sediment resuspension which is required to maintain water clarity. They also prevent algal blooms in coastal waters because of their significant nutrient uptake of nitrogen and phosphorous. These coastal habitats are increasingly threatened by anthropogenic activities and climate change induced sea level rise. The impact of these threats would most likely impair the ecologic and economic serviced provided by these habitats. Therefore, this special issue, which compiles five regional studies documenting the distribution and long-term trends of SAV and seagrass communities in GoM, is very important and timely.

The Guest Editors have done a fantastic job in introducing their special issue in the next section. It has been a real pleasure to work with the guest editors and authors on this special issue in the physical geography category. We hope that readers will find the work gathered here to be as informative and invigorating as we have.

This special issue also includes a full book review section. As always, we conclude by inviting more proposals for themed issues of Southeastern Geographer, as well as inviting readers to continuing submitting excellent work to the journal. If you would like to organize a themed issue, please send a 2-page proposal highlighting the summary, justification, list of specific research areas, and potential author names/affiliation (if already known) to segeditors@uga.edu.

On a final note, we are excited to announce that Southeastern Geographers will now accept color figures for its online version. Printed versions will still be grayscale. For more information, please refer to the article submission guidelines document at http://sedaag.org/southeastern-geographer/