Welcome and Hello!

Hello out there!  Welcome to "The Green Ranter". This blog will be my outlet, will allowing me to share with you my experiences while completing my degree in Environmental Management.  I came up with the idea for this last month after volunteering at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.  My Urban Watershed professor at University of Maryland University College asked me if I would be willing to do a report on my days volunteering in the marsh grass census (see the post list on the right).  I, of course, agreed to the report and began asking my new friends at SERC a lot of questions.  (Thanks to everyone at SERC for being so nice and helpful.) As I was beginning to compile my notes and start the project, I tried to figure out the best way for me to present this to my classmates.  When a few at SERC expressed an interest in reading my report as well, my mind started to churn out ideas and... this blog was born.

My plan here is to share with you things that I come across in my travels or subjects I may research.  There are some local projects in stream-bed restoration that I hope to learn much more about.  My home town of Chesapeake Beach, MD is raising oysters, so I hope to go back and delve into aquaculture!  I plan on sharing interviews with people I find who work, study or teach in the environmental fields  (Anyone want to volunteer to be interviewed first?).  Having grown up here on the Chesapeake Bay, I know there are many things to discover that I will probably find myself not wanting for some subject to cover.

There is so much to learn out there that teaches us how important it is to protect our environment.  I felt a need to share what I am learning and what I will discover.  I look forward to doing these things and hope I can be entertaining and informative enough that you would like to come back. That may lead to a long and healthy blogging career, complete with awards and recognition when all is said and done.  But in order for that to happen, I need to write about topics that are interesting, things that people want to read in order to entice you to come back and read more. 

So please, go back and read the SERC post.  I will have more to share in the very near future. I look forward to this experience and hope you do as well.  Follow the blog and post your comments below. 

Thanks for stopping in.  More to come!

John Murray