Last month we added a new element to the Living Landscape Observer - Featured Voices. Going forward, each issue will highlight the work, experiences and perspective of an individual involved in the practice of landscape conservation or the study of large landscapes. Our interviewees will come from academia, the public sector, nonprofit organizations and business- all with the ultimate goal of sharing knowledge and insights into this complex and growing field.  

Our featured voice this month is Dr. Jackie M.M. Gonzales ,  an environmental historian whose research has been informed by several years working at non-profit environmental policy organizations in Albany, New York as well as time spent as an interpreter for the National Park Service at Cape Cod National Seashore, Chickamauaga and Chattanooga National Military Park, and Manzanar National Historic Site. Gonzales currently works for Research Associates, Inc and holds a PhD from the University at Albany, SUNY. 

Her exciting dissertation project, Coastal Parks for a Metropolitan Nation, is a wide-ranging study of national park expansion in the postwar era. In it, she examines the unprecedented role played by local organizations and individuals in shaping federal protected area policy as well as the connections between the push for coastal parks and the broader environmental movement. Learn more   here .