Alberti, Marina

Marina Alberti is professor of urban and environmental planning in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington. She directs the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Urban Design and Planning and the Urban Ecology Research Laboratory. She teaches courses in urban ecology, environmental planning, geographic information systems and group dynamic and conflict resolution. She also teaches an advanced course in research design. Her research interests are in the impacts of alternative urban development patterns on ecosystem dynamics.

She is the principal investigator on a number of grant-funded research projects including an NSF Biocomplexity Grant project aiming to study the emergent properties of urban landscapes in Seattle, Wash., and Phoenix, Ariz. Her research also focuses on measures of urban environmental performance that can be used to monitor progress and inform policy-making and scenario planning. She is especially interested in advanced interdisciplinary approaches to urban ecological problems. Her most recent book entitled Advances in Urban ecology (Springer 2008) synthesizes the state of knowledge on the complex interactions between of urbanization and ecological function and articulate the challenges for scholars of urban ecosystems