Environment

 edited by Martin Melosi

 

From semi-tropical coastal areas to high mountain peaks, from swampy lowlands to modern cities, the environment holds a fundamental importance in shaping the character of the American South. This volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture provides a timely view of the physical setting of the development of human culture in the region. Articles examine how the South’s ecology, physiography, and climate have influenced southerners—not only as a daily fact of life but also as a metaphor for understanding culture and identity.

Climate, soil, and other factors have created a long growing season and the economic dominance of defining agricultural crops such as cotton and tobacco in the history of the region. The social construction of the southern environment includes appealing scenes of Spanish moss-draped trees and lazy, hazy days. Constant change, however, has been a key theme of southern environmental history and remains so today. Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of the Gulf Coast in 2005 showed nature’s continuing power to affect life in the American South.

This volume includes 98 essays that explore the sweeping and the specific elements of the southern environment. There are broad overviews of subjects such as plants, animals, energy use and development, and natural disasters. Shorter topical entries feature individual species such as alligators, the ivory-billed woodpecker, kudzu, and the mockingbird. Also covered are important individuals in southern environmental history and prominent places in the landscape, such as the south’s national parks and seashores. New articles cover contemporary issues in land use and conservation, environmental protection, and the current status of the flora and fauna widely associated with the South.

Martin Melosi is Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Houston. He is author of several books, including the award-winning The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • Environment Overview
  • Animals
  • Appalachian Coal Region
  • Aquatic Life, Freshwater
  • Birds and Birding
  • Climate and Weather
  • Coastal Marshes
  • Dams
  • Endangered Species
  • Energy Use and Development
  • Environment Justice
  • Environmental Movements
  • Flood Control and Drainage
  • Forests
  • Gardens and Gardening
  • Indians and the Environment
  • Insects
  • Invasive and Alien Species (Floral and Faunal)
  • Land Use
  • Marine Environment, Fish and Fisheries
  • Natural Disasters
  • Natural Resources
  • Naturalists
  • Oil Pollution
  • Parks and Recreation Areas
  • Plant Uses
  • Plants
  • Pollution
  • Reclamation and Irrigation
  • Rivers and Lakes
  • Roads and Trails
  • Shellfish
  • Soil and Soil Conservation
  • Streams and Steamboats
  • Swamps
  • Tennessee Valley Authority
  • Trees
  • Water Use
  • Wetlands
    ____________________________
  • Air-conditioning
  • Alligators and Crocodiles
  • Anderson, Walter Inglis
  • Appalachian Mountains
  • Armadillo
  • Assateague Island National Seashore
  • Atchafalaya Basin Swamp
  • Audubon, John James
  • Azaleas
  • Bartram, William
  • Big Bend National Park
  • Big Thicket
  • Biscayne National Park
  • Blue Ridge Mountains
  • Cancer Alley (Louisiana)
  • Cape Lookout National Seashore
  • Chesapeake Bay
  • Cumberland Island and Little Cumberland Island
  • Cypress
  • Dogwood, Flowering
  • Dry Tortugas
  • Florida Everglades
  • Florida Keys
  • Florida Panther
  • Galveston Bay
  • Great Smoky Mountains
  • Guadalupe Mountains National Park
  • Homer, Winslow
  • Hot Springs National Park
  • Ivory-billed Woodpecker
  • Kudzu
  • Lightwood
  • Live Oak
  • Magnolia
  • Mammoth Cave National Park
  • Mississippi River
  • Mockingbird
  • Muhammad, Benjamin Franklin Chavis
  • Muir, John
  • Natchez Trace
  • Nuclear Pollution
  • Odum, Eugene P.
  • Offshore Oil Industry
  • Okefenokee Swamp
  • Opossum (“Possum”)
  • Outer Banks
  • Ozarks
  • Padre Island National Seashore
  • Palm Trees
  • Persimmon
  • Red River Expedition
  • Rio Grande River
  • Sassafras
  • Shenandoah Valley
  • Spanish Moss
  • Tellico Dam
  • Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway
  • Warren County, N.C.
  • Wilson Dam