Line

Gordon

PhD, Associate professor

Director

line.gordon@su.se

+46 737078529

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@LineGordon

Staff profile

Line Gordon is the director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre

Profile summary

  • Social-ecological systems
  • Resilience thinking
  • Global sustainability
  • Food systems
  • Gastronomic landscapes
  • Water resources management
  • Moisture recycling
  • Sahel
  • Drylands

Line Gordon is an internationally recognised scientist in sustainability of water, food, and the biosphere. She conducts innovative research that combines work with small scale farmers in Africa, global models of land-use and rainfall interactions, and culinary innovators.

She has previously served as deputy director, deputy science director and research theme leader at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

As a researcher, Gordon is particularly interested in how intentional and unintentional actions in one place can influence systemic change elsewhere. In research she integrates insights from resilience thinking, land use change, food systems, hydrology, and social-ecological systems.

Her work also includes extensive experience in leading international research projects. One example is her research on Moisture recycling, analysing how land use change influence rainfall patterns and hydrology elsewhere.

She has also led, and still contributes to several research projects in the Sahel region including research on ecosystem services, livelihoods and social-ecological resilience assessments. This research has been funded by grants from SIDA, the Swedish Research Council, CGIAR and the French National Research Agency (ANR).

She currently co-leads the food theme in the Wallenberg Foundation funded Stanford collaboration programmes on ‘Natural capital, resilience and biosphere stewardship’ and ‘Fundamental research in biosphere-based sustainability science’. She is one of the authors of the forthcoming EAT-Lancet Commission, and on its Executive Editorial Team.

She is on the board of directors of the EAT Foundation, a science-based global platform for food system transformation. One of her key interests in terms of food system change is related to aspirational change, especially in the Nordic region.

Gordon has published more than 50 research articles, including articles in PNAS and Trends in Ecology and the Environment. She also co-authored the book Water Resilience for Human Prosperity (2014) and has contributed to several other book chapters.

Gordon has a PhD in Natural Resources Management from Department of Systems Ecology at Stockholm University, and a Post Doc at the International Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka.

She is a popular speaker at Swedish and International events, especially around food system change, water resources management and more general aspects of sustainable development.

Staff details

ORCID: 0000-0002-0265-5356

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Gordon, Line

Publications by Gordon, Line

Remote land use impacts on river flows through atmospheric teleconnections

Wang-Erlandsson, L., I. Fetzer, P.W. Keys, R.J. van der Ent, H.H.G. Savenije, L.J. Gordon

2018 - Journal / article

The effects of land-use change on river flows have usually been explained by changes within a river basin. However, land-atmosphere feedback such as moisture recycling can link local land-use change to modifications of remote precipitation, with further knock-on effects on distant river flows. Here, we look at river flow changes caused by both land-use change and water use within the basin, as well as modifications of imported...

Megacity precipitationsheds reveal tele-connected water security challenges

Keys, P. W., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Gordon, L. J.

2018 - Journal / article

Urbanization is a global process that has taken billions of people from the rural countryside to concentrated urban centers, adding pressure to existing water resources. Many cities are specifically reliant on renewable freshwater regularly refilled by precipitation, rather than fossil groundwater or desalination. A precipitationshed can be considered the “watershed of the sky” and identifies the origin of precipitation fallin...

Mapping regional livelihood benefits from local ecosystem services assessments in rural Sahel

Malmborg K., Sinare H., Enfors Kautsky E., Ouedraogo I., Gordon L.J.

2018 - Journal / article

Most current approaches to landscape scale ecosystem service assessments rely on detailed secondary data. This type of data is seldom available in regions with high levels of poverty and strong local dependence on provisioning ecosystem services for livelihoods. We develop a method to extrapolate results from a previously published village scale ecosystem services assessment to a higher administrative level, relevant for land ...

Distilling the role of ecosystem services in the Sustainable Development Goals

Wood, S. L.R., Jones, S., Johnson, J.A., Brauman, K.A., Chaplin-Kramer, R. et.al.

2017 - Journal / article

Achieving well-being for all, while protecting the environment, is one of the most pressing global challenges of our time, and a central idea in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We believe that integrating ecosystem services, the benefits nature provides to people, into strategies for meeting the SDGs can help achieve this. Many development goals are likely underpinned by the delivery of one or more ecosystem servi...

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Gordon, Line

Stockholm Resilience Centre is a collaboration between Stockholm University and the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Stockholm Resilience Centre
Stockholm University, Kräftriket 2B
SE-10691
Phone: +46 8 674 70 70
info@stockholmresilience.su.se

Organisation number: 202100-3062
VAT No: SE202100306201