Her research interests center around interactions among freshwater resources, ecosystem services and food production, with a focus on how resilience thinking can enable better management of these resources. Her work ranges from the global to the local (mainly sub-Saharan Africa) scale.

She is currently involved in three main research areas:

1. Resilience of smallholder agriculture in dryland sub-Saharan Africa
Dryland sub-Saharan Africa is challenged by extreme inter- and intra-annual rainfall variability. Improving water management in rainfed agriculture seems to be a key feature of building resilience in these landscapes. This work involves fieldwork in southern Niger, Kwa-ZuluNatal (South Africa) and the Pangani River (Tanzania).

2. Assessments of bundles of ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes
Agriculture increases food production, but often at on the expense of other ecosystem services. In this research field, Gordon aims to increase the empirical and conceptual knowledge of how ecosystem services interact with each other, in order to improve management so as to that can take advantage of synergies among ecosystem services and minimize unfavorable trade-offs. She also analyzes the relationship between regulating ecosystem services and ecosystem resilience. Fieldwork is conducted in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa.

3. Agriculture, climate change, hydrology and regime shifts
Agriculture and climate change alter terrestrial and aquatic hydrology and affect ecosystem resilience. Gordon is particularly interested in global-scale mapping of regions that are vulnerable to agriculture and water-driven ecosystem regime shifts.

Another project, on climate, hydrology and socio-ecological resilience in the Arctic, seeks understanding of the vulnerability of  various regions in the Arcticare to hydrologically driven regime shifts.

Line Gordon did her PhD in Natural Resources Management at the Department of Systems Ecology at Stockholm University. She spent her post doc at the International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka within the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture. She also served as a coordinating lead-author for the Ecosystem Chapter.

Truly interested in transdisciplinary research as well as in the interface of science and society, Gordon is an associate member of the Resilience Alliance, a subject editor of the journal Ecology and Society and on the editorial board of Water International.

She also serves on the Scientific Program Committee of the World Water Week and serves on the board of Albaeco, an institute devoted to the communication of sustainability science to the general public.