By this afternoon, you should have enough notes to write a story. The second thing you need to do is a little research on the topic you want to write about. You will get a chance to do some research in the library and on the Internet later today. The third thing you need to do is develop sources and conduct interviews. In journalism, and especially environmental reporting, the sources for your stories are very important.
Sources can be documents of all kinds, press releases, government reports, etc.
You might find yourself talking to a scientist, for example, like Dr. Bob Thomas here. He is a biologist, and if you ask him the right questions, he can tell you a lot about the science of how wetlands are important in the Louisiana environment. You might also talk to politicians, or other non-elected officials who work for the government, maybe someone at the Corps of Engineers or the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. An easy way to find out how to contact those departments would be to use a search engine like Google. When you conduct an interview, all that means is you are asking people questions.