The Ecological Society of America (ESA) organized two simultaneous workshops for a) senior undergraduate and beginning graduate students in ecology and b) early career academic ecologists for a one-week training workshop during the week of 2-7 June 2013. The workshops were based at the Maritime Institute in Baltimore, Maryland and the National Science Foundation provided financial support.

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As part of the Scaling Up: Future of Environmental Decisions workshop (2-7 June 2013), I wrote "Singing the Chesapeake Bay Blues". Apologies to my colleague Howard Ernst, who wrote an excellent book "Chesapeake Bay Blues", for adopting his book title into the song. This workshop was sponsored by the Ecological Society of America, with National Science Foundation funding.

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On 4 June 2013, I joined a panel on the National Public Radio's Diane Rehm Show at the WAMU studio in Washington, D.C. to talk about jellyfish. Diane had Lisa-Ann Gershwin, a jellyfish taxonomist who wrote the book "Stung: On jellyfish blooms and the future of the oceans" on the show. Jack Cover, general curator at the National Aquarium in Baltimore who collects jellyfish from Chesapeake Bay to display in the Aquarium, was also on the panel.

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This spring brings hopeful signs of an environmental awakening. I woke up this morning thinking about Rachel Carson. I wasn’t thinking about the author, exactly. It was more to do with the period of the early 1960s when Rachel Carson made a difference - a period of growing environmental consciousness as a prelude to taking action. Could it be that we are now in a similar period with respect to climate change? That possibility has put me in a cautiously optimistic mood.

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The Vansville Farmers Club was formed in 1884 as a successor to the Maryland Agricultural Society at the home of James D. Cassard. Club members meet at each other's farms on a monthly basis, tour the facilities and share practices with each other. The Vansville Farmers Club created the first Farmers' Institute that developed into a statewide Farmers' Institute, which then evolved into the Extension Service of the University of Maryland.

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The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson … In seventh grade in Ohio, in the heartland of America and without ever actually seeing the ocean, I read Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us. I had become very enamored in everything to do with water, but my experience was confined to freshwater in the streams, rivers and lakes of Ohio, Michigan and Canada.

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On May 16, Marine Estuarine and Environmental Sciences (MEES) students, faculty and alumni gathered in the newly renovated HJ Patterson Hall on the University of Maryland College Park campus in honor of Dr. Robert E. "Bob" Menzer. The occasion was the formal opening of the new Robert E. Menzer Classroom and Central Administration suite. Two state of the art electronic classrooms, offices, and conference room were unveiled.

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This post is part four of a four part series on scientific synthesis. In some cases, scientific synthesis is not the end product, rather it can be the start of a science application effort. In a case study to demonstrate the use of scientific synthesis which led to a science application effort, I will recount our efforts regarding global seagrass trajectories.

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This post is part three of a four part series on scientific synthesis. The Integration and Application Network (IAN) was created to facilitate scientific synthesis as part of science applications. In many respects, the linking of integration with application is crucial, and IAN projects tend to use synthesis in order to create effective applications. The IAN approach to synthesis is similar to the previous blogs (Parts 1 & 2 of this series) in many ways:

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This post is part two of a four part series on scientific synthesis. At our annual UMCES Faculty Convocation organized by the Appalachian Laboratory faculty senators Drs. Katia Englehardt and Matt Fitzpatrick, we discussed scientific synthesis and asked ourselves the following 4 questions: 1) How do we approach synthesis?, 2) How does UMCES facilitate synthesis?, 3) What are the challenges to doing synthesis within UMCES? and 4) What needs to change to become better in synthesis? We had Drs.

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