Albert Norströms research has focused on understanding and managing the resilience of coral reefs, and has included laboratory experiments, extensive field sampling and theoretical/synthetic work. It has led to new understanding on variables influencing recruitment and dispersal of corals, has shown how artisanal fishing can increase the vulnerability of coral reefs to macroalgal regime shifts, has given innovative insights into the complex dynamics of coral reef regime shifts and provided a suite of novel empirical indicators of reef resilience. Current projects revolve around the social and ecological mechanisms maintaining the degraded states of coastal marine ecosystems, and include: i) identifying reinforcing (positive) feedback mechanisms that tend to lock ecosystems in undesirable states, ii) breaking feedbacks and reversing undesirable states of marine ecosystems iii) understanding how changes in ecological feedbacks interact with socioeconomic processes, generating so called “social-ecological traps" and iv) developing indicators of social-ecological resilience of coral reef/fisheries systems. Albert is currently a research coordinator for the Programme on Ecoystem Change and Society (PECS), which has its International Programme Office hosted by the Stockholm Resilience Centre. This programme is jointly sponsored by ICSU and UNESCO and complements the four other ICSU sponsored global environmental change programmes and the Earth Systems Science Partnership.
The goal of PECS is to generate scientific and policy relevant knowledge of social-ecological dynamics and transformations to enable stewardship toward sustainable development, including mitigation of poverty. PECS research will focus on:
- the multi-scale dynamics of social-ecological systems (seascapes and landscapes)
- the stewardship of these systems and the ecosystem services they generate
- the relationships between ecosystem services and human well-being, wealth and poverty.
A transdisciplinary, comparative, place-based approach, that is international in scope, is at the core of PECS research.
