A majority of tornado research focuses on the Great Plains region of the United States. Knowledge of tornado environments outside of the Great Plains is limited; this is especially true for the Southeast U.S. In addition, little is known about the role of the lower troposphere on tornadogenesis. Therefore, this study examines low-level thermodynamic parameters associated with tornadoes in the Southeast U.S between 1960 and 2002. Previous studies have shown that higher values of CAPE, 0-3 km CAPE, 0-1 and 0-3 km SRH, and 0-1 and 0-1 km EHI are more likely associated with significant tornadoes. Similar studies have shown that decreasing LCL, LFC heights, and CIN are common with significant tornadoes. This study supports that higher values of shear and instability/shear and lower CIN values are associated with significant tornadoes in the Southeast. However, this study indicates that instability, LCL, and LFC heights may be poor tornado strength discriminators.

Southeastern states have about 26 percent of the nations total fatalities, and are about 24 percent above the national mean over recent years. Descriptive statistics, graphs, and figures are used to illustrate and quantify the crash trends, which depict a comprehensive picture of status and trends of the fatal crashes in southeastern states. The severity of crashes is studied as a function of characteristics of the person involved in the crash, vehicle, traffic condition, physical road geometry, and environmental factors. Detailed geometric feature data were collected for this study, which makes it possible to investigate the relationship between geometric features and crash severity. This study identifies causal factors contributing to the high fatality rate in southeastern states, and sheds light on the differences and similarities among these states for reducing the severity of fatal crashes, by developing multinomial logit models to explain the severity and type of fatal crashes.

Snow/ice events are indeed a rare occurrence in the southeast United States. As a result, residents of the Southeast often exemplify a passive attitude towards winter weather and are often unprepared when it strikes. This study analyzed every recorded winter weather event that struck the Southeast (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia) from the winter season of 1961-'62 through 2000-'01 from both a spatial and temporal standpoint. Through the results of this study, it was evident that Georgia saw the most overall winter weather events and January seemed to be the most productive month overall. This study also analyzed teleconnection (ENSO, PNA, NAO, AO) indices per study period season in order to deduce correlations with active/inactive Southeast winters. Through statistical analyses, correlations were deemed insignificant.

The timberlands in the South provide a large resource base for forest-based industry. This resource base is utilized to provide major contributions to the southern economy. Aruna et al. (1997) examined southern forest-based industry economic contributions from the early 1990?s. This study examined the change in economic contributions primarily using 2001 data. In 1992, southern forest-based industries provided 633,367 (full- and part-time) jobs and this increased to 718,176 in 2001, accounting for only 1.3% of the total employment in the South versus 1.5%. Forest-based earnings in the South experienced a real increase of $181 million (1990 dollars) from 1990 to 1998 and accounted for 1.7% of total southern U.S. earnings in both years. The value of shipments attributed to southern forest-based industries increased $22.8 billion in real 1991 dollars which translated into a real increase of $11.0 billion (1991 dollars) in valueded between 1991 and 2001. In 2001, value of shipments increased to 9.6% of the South?s total from 7.8% in 1991 and valueded increased from 8.0% in 1991 to 9.1% in 2001. Although there were increases in the economic contributions of southern forest-based industries, overall there was little in the way of relative change over this time period.