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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This post is part one of a four part series on scientific synthesis. The word synthesis is derived from the Greek word, syntithenai meaning 'to put together', and was first used in the latter part of the 1500s. The word integration is derived from the Latin word, integratus meaning 'to render whole', and was first used in the early 1600s. In the context of scientific synthesis or integration, the definition of these two words converge.

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Don Boesch and I just completed teaching a course in Science for Environmental Management as part of the Marine-Estuarine-Environmental Sciences graduate program. This course was taught using an inverted or ‘flipped’ classroom style for the first time. Don and I posted the readings as pdfs and the lectures as 10-15 min. Quicktime or YouTube videos ahead of the classtime.

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I traveled to Stony Brook University on Long Island for Christine O'Connell's dissertation defense at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (SoMAS) on May 6. Christine presented the results of her survey on stakeholder perceptions of Long Island Sound. She did a wonderful job analyzing and teasing apart the survey results. It was clear that Connecticut people had a much keener interest in Long Island Sound than New Yorkers.

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Professor Paul Greenfield was my mentor both at the University of Queensland and in the Healthy Waterways campaign. Paul recently retired from his role as Vice Chancellor of the University of Queensland and I would like to provide my perspective on his role as a human catalyst. Sometimes the most difficult thing to measure is the most important thing, for example, the action of a catalyst is absolutely critical for a reaction to take place, but it is difficult to measure.

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We had a great visit with Dr. Robert Twilley, Louisiana Sea Grant Director and a faculty member at Louisiana State University. Robert gave a wonderful seminar at Horn Point Laboratory, covering the history of coastal Louisiana wetland loss, Mississippi River diversions and provided the context for the 2012 Master Plan.

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People are part of a hybrid socio-environmental ecosystem. The debate over whether people should start geoengineering the atmosphere in order to prevent the worst effects of global warming ignores one essential fact - we already are geoengineering the atmosphere. Geoengineering is the deliberate effort to manipulate processes that control conditions in the atmosphere on a global scale.

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