Postdoctoral Research Fellow
University of Leeds
sofia@biffi.me
sofiabiffi

About me

I am an environmental scientist working at the School of Geography at the University of Leeds. My research falls within agro-ecology and I am interested in agri-environment schemes impact and uptake, soil properties in sustainable management systems, and farmland biodiversity. I work with Prof Pippa Chapman and Prof Guy Ziv.

My main postdoc project has been the Resilient Dairy Landscape project. I have been assessing the effects of planting hedgerows for climate change mitigation, flood risk alleviation, and farmland biodiversity. In our two most recent publications, I measured the soil organic carbon and biomass carbon stock of hedges of different ages to calculate the CO₂ offset potential of planting +40% more hedges in agricultural landscapes (Climate Change Committee, 2018). I also have been using automated call identification to analyse the effects of hedgerow planting on birds and bats populations over time, and have been looking at changes in soil hydraulic properties with hedgerow planting. 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.

Now I am also working for Yorkshire Integrated Catchment Solutions Programme (iCASP), 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 Dr 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 Prof 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 a MRes in Biodiversity & Conservation from the University of Leeds and a BSc in Natural Sciences from the University of Milan.

Recent Publications

• Planting hedgerows: Biomass carbon sequestration and contribution towards net-zero targets
  Sofia Biffi, Pippa J. Chapman, Richard P. Grayson, Guy Ziv (2023) Science of The Total Environment 892 164482.
• Soil carbon sequestration potential of planting hedgerows in agricultural landscapes
  Sofia Biffi, Pippa J. Chapman, Richard P. Grayson, Guy Ziv (2022) Journal of Environmental Management 307 114484.
• Aligning agri-environmental subsidies and environmental needs: a comparative analysis between the US and EU
  Sofia Biffi, Rebecca Traldi, Bart Crezee, Michael Beckmann, Lukas Egli, Dietrich Epp Schmidt, Nicole Motzer, Murat Okumah, Ralf Seppelt, Eleonore Louise Slabbert, Kate Tiedeman, Haoluan Wang and Guy Ziv (2021) Environmental Research Letters 16 054067.
• Drivers of songbird territory density in the boundaries of a lowland arable farm
  Megan E. Tresise, Sofia Biffi, Rob H. Field, Les G. Firbank (2021) Acta Oecologica 111 103720.
• Epigeal fauna of urban food production sites show no obvious relationships with soil characteristics or site area
  Sofia Biffi, CM De Souza, LG Firbank (2019) Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 286 106677.

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 2021 webinar disseminating the findings of our study on soil organic carbon stocks and atmospheric carbon offsetting potential of planting hedgerows.

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.