Contact Information
nnorden at humboldt dot org dot co

Instituto Alexander von Humboldt

Coordinator – Forest Research

I earned a BA in Biology and a MA in Ecology from the University Pierre & Marie Curie, Paris VI (France), and a PhD in Ecology from the University Paul Sabatier, Toulouse III (France). After a post-doctoral position at the University of Connecticut, I came back to Colombia and joined the Andes University as a Visiting Professor, and then the Javeriana University as an Assistant Professor. Right now, I’m a researcher at the Humboldt Institue, and I’m coordinating the research agenda of Colombian forests.

I am broadly interested in understanding the different forces determining plant community assembly in tropical forests, using theoretical and empirical approaches from community ecology, functional ecology, and community phylogenetics. My research focuses on plant regeneration in both pristine and human-impacted landscapes from multiple tropical regions including Colombia, French Guiana, Costa Rica, Brazil and Mexico. Because seedling dynamics determines potential tree spatial distribution, it presumably has a critical impact on the dynamics of populations and communities. Assessing patterns of plant recruitment in regrowing forests therefore provides valuable insights into the consequences of landscape transformation and climate change, and enable prediction of forests responses to these global changes. Ultimately, a mechanistic understanding of forest regeneration is a key factor for the development of effective management and conservation practices in regenerating forests, which encompass more than 50% of all tropical forests globally.