me
Postdoc
Aarhus University
Foulum office: Blichers Allé 20, 8830 Tjele
Aarhus office: Building 1171 Ole Worms Allé 3, 8000 Aarhus
sofia@biffi.me
sofiabiffi


About me

I am an environmental scientist working at the Institut for Agroøkologi at Aarhus University (DK). My research falls within agro-ecology and I am interested in soil properties in sustainable management systems, soil organic carbon stocks estimation, agri-environment schemes impact and uptake, and farmland biodiversity. I work with Lars Munkholm, Iris Vogeler, and Klaus Butterbach-Bahl.

I am employed as part of the EU Horizon MARVIC project, where my main contributions are to assess data availability for soil organic carbon modelling for MRV systems and to develop guidelines for model calibration and validation. During my previous postdoc I have worked with Pippa Chapman and Guy Ziv assessing the effects of planting hedgerows for climate change mitigation, flood risk alleviation, and farmland biodiversity. Hedgerows are great assets and we would like to see farmers being supported in planting even more of them. We have been interviewed in a Farming Guardian article about that. As part of the Yorkshire Integrated Catchment Solutions Programme (iCASP), I have also been conducting a large dataset analysis of soil organic carbon stocks in fields across England, Scotland, and Wales. I am assessing how these change with field management and environmental conditions to monitor carbon stocks in relation with changing farming practices. If you are (really) interested in soil health monitoring, you can read the Soil Health Pariliamentary Inquiry response I have co-lead with Ruth Wade for the University of Leeds.

Other projects I have collaborated with include BESTMAP, an international Horizon 2020 model working towards transparent agri-environment policies uptake modelling, and BioDAR, a University of Leeds based project looking into new ways to monitor aerial insect populations using weather satellite data. For my PhD thesis, I worked with Les Firbank investigating the use of cover crops and green compost amendment in arable land and their impact on aboveground and belowground invertebrates and bird populations at the RSPB Hope Farm. I have an MRes in Biodiversity & Conservation from the University of Leeds and a BSc in Natural Sciences from the University of Milan.

Recent Publications

A complete list of my publications can be found on my Google Scholar.

Webinar recordings

This is the 2022 webinar I have organised as part of a workshop on the delivery of multiple ecosystem services by hedgerows. The presentation contains some of the most recent findings of our study on aboveground biomass carbon stock and results by our collaborators at the university of Reading and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

This instead is our 2024 webinar disseminating the findings of our study on aboveground and soil organic carbon stocks and atmospheric carbon offsetting potential of planting hedgerows across the UK.

Recent conference presentations

  • Biffi, S., Chapman, P. J., Grayson, R. P., and Ziv, G.: Sequestering soil organic carbon by planting hedgerows in agricultural landscapes (poster), EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, 23–27 May 2022, EGU23-14030.

  • Biffi, S., Chapman, P. J., Grayson, R. P., and Ziv, G.: Planting hedgerows in England as a Nature-based Farming Solution for climate, biodiversity, and hydrology. ISCRAES 2022, Dublin, 28-31 Aug 2022.

  • Biffi, S., Chapman, P. J., Grayson, R. P., and Ziv, G.: The impact of hedges maturation on soil organic carbon stocks in agricultural landscapes, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15091.
  • Biffi, S., Field, R., & Firbank, L. Sustainable Soil Management in arable cropland and invertebrate prey availability to farmland bird chicks. 10thIALE World Congress, Università Milano-Bicocca, Italy, 1–5 July 2019.
  • Biffi, S., De Souza, C. M., & Firbank, L. (Poster) Epigeal fauna of urban food production sites show no obvious relationship with area or soil characteristics. 10thIALE World Congress, Università Milano-Bicocca, Italy, 1–5 July 2019.
  • Biffi, S., Field, R., Firbank, L. Sustainable Soil Management in arable cropland and invertebrate prey availability to farmland bird chicks. 20thStudent Conference on Conservation Science, University of Cambridge, UK, 26–28 March 2019.