Biosketch

Dr. Musacchio is an Associate Professor at UMN in the Department of Landscape Architecture and a fellow with the Institute on the Environment. Her research emphasizes how cities, towns, and regions of the world can be more biophilic, biodiverse, sustainable, and resilient by helping people reconnect to the web of life. She specifically focuses on how open space systems can be consciously (re)designed to provide enough suitable spaces for people, biodiversity, habitats, and infrastructure. This issue is a pressing concern because open space systems are key to biophilic design, climate adaptation plans, public health interventions, ecosystem service enhancement, and regional watershed management. Yet, public money to support green space systems is often not a top priority for many cities, towns, states, provinces, and nations.