astronomy

Line Gordon

Line Gordon is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Line Gordon rather than just read about it. In short: Line Gordon (born Line Josefin Gordon, 18 February, 1972) is a Swedish sustainability scientist whose transdisciplinary research combines food, water, and the benefits people receive from nature. Gordon is the director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and a professor at Stockholm University, Sweden.

Key takeaways

Line Gordon belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Line Gordon to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Line Gordon from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Line Gordon (born Line Josefin Gordon, 18 February, 1972) is a Swedish sustainability scientist whose transdisciplinary research combines food, water, and the benefits people receive from nature. Gordon is the director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and a professor at Stockholm University, Sweden. She is also on the board of the EAT foundation, and often participates in public discussions of food and climate in Sweden.

Early life and education Gordon, was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden. She was a high school exchange student in Northern Australia, and a university exchange student in Burkina Faso. She studied biology as an undergraduate, and her interest in further study in ecology was sparked by a lecture by Carl Folke on how people are connected to ecosystems. This experience led her to contact him, and go on to study for a PhD with him at Stockholm University. Gordon's PhD focused on the role of water in the biosphere at local and planetary scales. Her PhD was supervised by Carl Folke and Malin Falkenmark in Systems Ecology at Stockholm University. Gordon spent part of her PhD in Canberra, Australia collaborating with Australian scientists at CSIRO. The final paper from her thesis was the first assessment of how human land use change, especially deforestation and irrigation, had altered the flow of evaporative water into the atmosphere. Gordon earned her PhD in 2003 in Natural Resources Management, Department of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University for her dissertation "Land Use, Freshwater Flows and Ecosystem Services in an Era of Global Change." In 2004, her PhD was recognized Stiftelsen Kung Carl XVI Gustafs 50-års fond, an award for excellent PhDs.

Career and research Following her PhD, Gordon was a postdoctoral fellow at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where she worked with David Molden on the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture. Following that, she returned to Stockholm University where she worked as a researcher, in 2006 at the Department of Systems Ecology and then in 2007 at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. She became an associate professor in 2012, and deputy director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre in 2013. She has also been a visiting researcher at CIRAD in France, McGill University in Canada, and STIAS – the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in Stellenbosch, South Africa. In 2018, Gordon became the director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. The Stockholm Resilience Centre is a partnership of Stockholm University and the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is a large transdisciplinary sustainability research centre with about 150 staff, which has Masters and PhD programmes in sustainability science. In 2021, she was appointed the Curt Bergfors Professor in sustainable food systems. Gordon's research has three main themes: research in Africa, water, and food. Gordon has had long-term research engagement in Africa. Over the past 15 years, she has conducted research in Burkina Faso, Tanzania, South Africa, Senegal, and Ghana. Gordon's research on water has focused on unravelling the critical roles of how the evaporation of water impacts water flows. With her PhD student Patrick Keys, she developed the concept of the precipitationshed. From her work on agriculture, Gordon moved on to the ecology of the food system, and she has increasingly collaborated with chefs and food producers. She is on the board of the EAT Foundation, and is one of the authors of the EAT-Lanet planetary health diet, which developed dietary guidelines that aim to provide healthy nutritious food to the world's people while limiting the damage of farming to the Earth's climate, nature, water. Gordon's leadership on sustainable and healthy food was noted by the magazine Aktuell Hållbarhet, which considered her one of the 100 most powerful Swedish sustainability leaders, and she entered their top ten in 2021.

Notable publications Gordon's most cited research has been on ecosystem services, food, and water. Her work has been published across a wide variety of journals spanning topics from global change, to food, and agro-ecosystems. Four of her most highly cited works are:

Gordon, Line J.; Steffen, Will; Jönsson, Bror F.; Folke, Carl; Falkenmark, Malin; Johannessen, Åse (24 May 2005). "Human modification of global water vapor flows from the land surface". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 102 (21): 7612–7617. Bibcode:2005PNAS..102.7612G. doi:10.1073/pnas.0500208102. PMC 1140421. PMID 15890780. Gordon, Line J.; Peterson, Garry D.; Bennett, Elena M. (April 2008). "Agricultural modifications of hydrological flows create ecological surprises". Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 23 (4): 211–219. Bibcode:2008TEcoE..23..211G. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2007.11.011. PMID 18308425. Bennett, Elena M.; Peterson, Garry D.; Gordon, Line J. (December 2009). "Understanding relationships among multiple ecosystem services". Ecology Letters. 12 (12): 1394–1404. Bibcode:2009EcolL..12.1394B. doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01387.x. PMID 19845725. Gordon, Line J.; Finlayson, C. Max; Falkenmark, Malin (April 2010). "Managing water in agriculture for food production and other ecosystem services". Agricultural Water Management. 97 (4): 512–519. Bibcode:2010AgWM...97..512G. doi:10.1016/j.agwat.2009.03.017.

References

External links

Line Gordon Stockholm Resilience Centre. Line Gordon on X

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Line Gordon

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Line Gordon claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Line Gordon before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Line Gordon ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Line Gordon

In research: Line Gordon appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Line Gordon in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Line Gordon is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century Swedish women scientists, Academic staff of Stockholm University, Living people, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Line Gordon outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Line Gordon in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Line Gordon means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Line Gordon out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Line Gordon in simple terms?

Why does Line Gordon matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Line Gordon?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Line Gordon.