#american south

[reasonsforhope]

"A century of gradual reforestation across the American East and Southeast has kept the region cooler than it otherwise would have become, a new study shows.

The pioneering study of progress shows how the last 25 years of accelerated reforestation around the world might significantly pay off in the second half of the 21st century.

Using a variety of calculative methods and estimations based on satellite and temperature data from weather stations, the authors determined that forests in the eastern United States cool the land surface by 1.8 – 3.6°F annually compared to nearby grasslands and croplands, with the strongest effect seen in summer, when cooling amounts to 3.6 – 9°F.

The younger the forest, the more this cooling effect was detected, with forest trees between 20 and 40 years old offering the coolest temperatures underneath.

“The reforestation has been remarkable and we have shown this has translated into the surrounding air temperature,” Mallory Barnes, an environmental scientist at Indiana University who led the research, told The Guardian.

“Moving forward, we need to think about tree planting not just as a way to absorb carbon dioxide but also the cooling effects in adapting for climate change, to help cities be resilient against these very hot temperatures.”

The cooling of the land surface affected the air near ground level as well, with a stepwise reduction in heat linked to reductions in near-surface air temps.

“Analyses of historical land cover and air temperature trends showed that the cooling benefits of reforestation extend across the landscape,” the authors write. “Locations surrounded by reforestation were up to 1.8°F cooler than neighboring locations that did not undergo land cover change, and areas dominated by regrowing forests were associated with cooling temperature trends in much of the Eastern United States.”

By the 1930s, forest cover loss in the eastern states like the Carolinas and Mississippi had stopped, as the descendants of European settlers moved in greater and greater numbers into cities and marginal agricultural land was abandoned.

The Civilian Conservation Corps undertook large replanting efforts of forests that had been cleared, and this is believed to be what is causing the lower average temperatures observed in the study data.

However, the authors note that other causes, like more sophisticated crop irrigation and increases in airborne pollutants that block incoming sunlight, may have also contributed to the lowering of temperatures over time. They also note that tree planting might not always produce this effect, such as in the boreal zone where increases in trees are linked with increases in humidity that way raise average temperatures."

-via Good News Network, February 20, 2024

[karinyosa]

id:

a tweet by azadeh shahshahani (@ashahshahani) that says, "anticipate heightened targeting of palestinian and muslim community members by the fbi in the coming weeks.

if you live in the u.s. south and are contacted by the fbi for questioning, contact us at project south.

the national lawyers guild has a national hotline: (212) 679-2811"

end id.

[lesbianjudasiscariot]

Hey, Do You Wanna See The West With Me?

[aisling-saoirse]

Wisps of Spanish Moss in a Cypress Grove - February 21st 2024

[gritsandbrits]

"But fighting is wrong violence is not the answer!!"

Those cunts tried to kill a black guy in broad daylight A PUBLIC EVENT AT THAT and you think we just gonna SIT BY and let that happen??? Fuck outta here with that respectability politics bull!

[yearningforunity]

Shack-like Black Jeweler shop next to a small food store covered with beverage ads in a slum section of the city of Atlanta, 1938.

[sylviaddict]

american south

[bonelessratss]

rural texas summer moodboard

[joey-the-boy]

unable to be normal from now on bc I was just informed that Will Solace is SOUTHERN?? I have to rethink all of his dialogue in all the books now, I was not aware of this

I physically cannot imagine mr WILLIAM ANDREW SOLACE with a Southern accent

like I guess I knew he was born in Austin? in the back of my head? but it never occurred to me that he might have obtained that particular dialect

[lying-on-floors]

As someone who lives in the deep south--South Carolina--I was always around country and bluegrass music, and I grew up hearing older songs and newer songs and I stopped listening to it because of peer pressure and shame, but also because I was sick of it, but I've recently been listening to country songs again, some I remember, some I don't and I forgot how many country and bluegrass love songs there are! Like, the best country songs are the ones about revenge on shitty men, leftist values, silly shit, and love/breakup songs. That's all you gotta know. Don't listen to none of that "AMERICA RAHH" and "I beat my wife while she wears a bikini" bullshit. Like, there are a lot of good country and bluegrass songs that get pushed to the side because of post 9/11 country. Like, GOOD country music is actually fun. Banjo's and the works are also hella fun to play.

[reasonsforhope]

"When considering the great victories of America’s conservationists, we tend to think of the sights and landscapes emblematic of the West, but there’s also a rich history of acknowledging the value of the wetlands of America’s south.

These include such vibrant ecosystems as the Everglades, the Great Dismal Swamp, the floodplains of the Congaree River, and “America’s Amazon” also known as the “Land Between the Rivers”—recently preserved forever thanks to generous donors and work by the Nature Conservancy (TNC).

With what the TNC described as an “unprecedented gift,” 8,000 acres of pristine wetlands where the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers join, known as the Mobile Delta, were purchased for the purpose of conservation for $15 million. The owners chose to sell to TNC rather than to the timber industry which planned to log in the location.

“This is one of the most important conservation victories that we’ve ever been a part of,” said Mitch Reid, state director for The Nature Conservancy in Alabama.

The area is filled with oxbow lakes, creeks, and swamps alongside the rivers, and they’re home to so many species that it ranks as one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, such that Reid often jokes that while it has rightfully earned the moniker “America’s Amazon” the Amazon should seriously consider using the moniker “South America’s Mobile.”

“This tract represents the largest remaining block of land that we can protect in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. First and foremost, TNC is doing this work for our fellow Alabamians who rightly pride themselves on their relationship with the outdoors,” said Reid, who told Advance Local that it can connect with other protected lands to the north, in an area called the Red Hills.

“Conservation lands in the Delta positions it as an anchor in a corridor of protected lands stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Appalachian Mountains and has long been a priority in TNC’s ongoing efforts to establish resilient and connected landscapes across the region.”

At the moment, no management plan has been sketched out, but TNC believes it must allow the public to use it for recreation as much as possible.

The money for the purchase was provided by a government grant and a generous, anonymous donor, along with $5.2 million from the Holdfast Collective—the conservation funding body of Patagonia outfitters."

Video via Mobile Bay National Estuary Program, August 7, 2020

Article via Good News Network, February 14, 2024

[iww-gnv]

(CN) — When Jeremy Kimbrell landed a job 24 years ago at the Mercedes Benz plant in Vance, Alabama, he thought his life had taken a turn for the better.  Just 22-years-old at the time, his experience included working in a clothing warehouse and for a roofing company. The pay was low, the benefits were meager, and Kimbrell wasn’t exactly fond of the hot and dangerous work.  Through an acquaintance, Kimbrell heard the newly minted Mercedes plant was hiring temporary workers with the possibility to be retained as employees. The jobs offered pay of up to $20 per hour, health insurance, vacation and sick days and a retirement plan. The incentives fell short of what union workers were earning at the so-called “Big Three” automakers of General Motors, Stellantis and Ford. Still, it was “pretty good for Alabama,” Kimbrell recalled thinking at the time. But as the years passed and the economy evolved, Kimbrell and other Mercedes workers began to feel increasingly neglected. Pay raises became smaller and less frequent, while promotions slowed to a trickle. Management constantly increased production goals and whittled away at employee liberties.  Temporary workers became less likely to be offered full-time employment — and even when they were, their wages were capped at lower levels than more senior employees. Turnover increased.  “Around the time of the Great Recession is when the workers began to feel like we were being treated like a dime a dozen,” Kimbrell said in a phone interview Feb. 13. “That has led to where we are now, where people are finally fed up.” Since January, at least 30% of workers at both the Mercedes and Hyundai plants in Alabama — plus more than half of workers at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee — have signed union authorization cards seeking recognition from their employers to unionize. That’s according to the United Auto Workers, a major union focused on the automobile industry with more than 400,000 current members.

[lesbianjudasiscariot]

Crying only because I'm happy Hold me across every state line

[aisling-saoirse]

Live Oak at the Riverwood research outpost - February 21st 2024

[daemonicdasein]

Riley Keough in American Honey (2016). Directed and written by Andrea Arnold.

[yearningforunity]

Wife and child of young sharecropper in cornfield beside house. Hillside Farm, Person County, North Carolina, 1939.

Ph: Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration