Meet the MARVICers

Greet Ruysschaert

Greet Ruysschaert is the coordinator of MARVIC. She is specialised in sustainable soil management and carbon farming. She is representing MARVIC in the EU CRC expert group and technical focus groups, is leading a collaboration network on MRV for the Flemish carbon farming action platform, is national coordinator for EJP SOIL and was coordinating the LIFE CarbonCounts project.

Hui Xu

Hui Xu is the Project Manager. She possesses extensive project management experience in academia and industry, with a strong foundation in fundamental research (PhD) on soil organic carbon. Passionate about sustainable agriculture, her role in MARVIC including overseeing project management, coordinating test cases and LUST groups.

Liisa Kulmala

Liisa Kulmala's primary expertise is in GHG exchange between ecosystems and the atmosphere. She started with forests, but nowadays her main work is agricultural and urban land use. Her main tasks are to co-lead WP3 and lead FMI activities. In MARVIC the main task of FMI is to develop an MRV tool for agriculture and provide Finnish data and expertise.

Istem Fer

Istem Fer is a Senior Researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI). She has a background in computational and quantitative ecology. Her work focuses on improving process-based mechanistic ecosystem models through model-data synthesis. Fer has been one of the core developers of the MRV system FMI has been establishing, with key contributions on data assimilation and ecological forecasting workflows. In MARVIC she is taking part in WP3 tasks.

Julius Vira

Julius Vira is a biogeochemical modeler at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, with a background in applied mathematics. His research focuses on finding new ways to test, improve and upscale process-based models using diverse sources of observational data. In MARVIC he will contribute to development and testing of operational processing chains for monitoring, verification and reporting of carbon sequestration.

Jan Peter Lesschen

Jan Peter Lesschen is a Senior Researcher on soils and climate at Wageningen Environmental Research. He has a background in soil science and is now focussing on climate change mitigation research in agriculture, mainly focussing on modelling and monitoring aspects. In MARVIC he is leading WP4 on the mitigation potentials of Carbon Farming.

Fenny van Egmond

Fenny van Egmond works at Wageningen Environmental Research and has a background in soil science, soil proximal and remote sensing, soil data standardisation, soil information systems. Her drive is to make the use and acquisition of soil data for better informed decision making easier, more efficient and fit for purpose. In MARVIC she will mainly contribute to WP2 on soil data.

Chantal Hendriks

Chantal Hendriks has a background in soil sciences, agricultural system analysis, and environmental modelling. Her current research focusses on carbon flow modelling of agricultural systems, and therefore she will mainly contribute to WP4 on the mitigation potential of carbon farming practices under current and future climate change scenarios.

Andrea Ferrarini

Andrea Ferrarini is a researcher in Agronomy and Field Crops at Department of Sustainable Crop Production (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, UCSC, Italy). His research focuses on carbon farming and regenerative agriculture solutions for perennial and annual cropping systems. In MARVIC he's LUST leader for “arable lands” and WP2 leader where he designs and validates scalable and fit-for-purpose crop and soil sensing technologies to be integrated within the overall MARVIC framework to MRV C removals in arable cropping systems.

Stefano Amaducci

Stefano Amaducci is a Full Professor of field Crops at UCSC and leader of the research team named “UCSC Field Crops Group”. His group in MARVIC, within WP1-WP3, at the interface of remote sensing, agronomy and crop-soil modelling, will implement and validate robust and accurate MRV solutions suited to support the decarbonization of the main arable cropping systems of Northern Italy.

Michele Croci

Michele Croci is a researcher in remote sensing at UCSC and in MARVIC he integrates remote and proximal sensing into a spatial crop-soil modelling toolbox where agricultural carbon removal credits are generated over multiple fields and cropping seasons.

Paolo Sckokai

Paolo Sckokai is a Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Agricultural and Food Economics at Università Cattolica, Piacenza, Italy and President-Elect of the European Association of Agricultural Economists (EAAE). He has worked extensively for more than 25 years in the evaluation of agricultural food and environmental policies.

Karina Marques

Karina Marques is a remote sensing and geospatial data specialist working at Esférico. Her background is on soil science, pedometrics, remote sensing, and machine learning methods. Her expertise includes understanding Earth Observation techniques and extends to the realm of ML algorithms. Her main role in the project is to design and validate a smart soil sampling decision tool for SOC monitoring and/or verification. Moreover, she is also involved in modelling carbon sequestration and GHG fluxes in agroforestry lands.

Ricardo Beck

Ricardo Beck is an expert in Carbon Farming schemes, project development and director at Esférico MRV Systems. His background is in environmental sciences, with a focus on natural resource management in the Mediterranean. His experience and role in European projects (such as CREDIBLE) granted him a place in the Expert Group advising the European Commission on the development of the certification framework for carbon removals in agriculture. In MARVIC, Ricardo supports the design of context-specific MRV systems.

Jaroslava Janků

Jaroslava Janků is an associate professor of soil science. Her research focuses on enhancing capabilities to monitor, manage and predict the contribution of soils to social, economic and environmental services. She carried out several grant projects associated with soil indicators as important soil characteristics for soil evaluation and assessment. In Marvic, she is contributing to the literature synopsis on the carbon sequestration potential and to test case in arable and grassland.

Jana Poláková

Jana Polakova's research addresses the challenges of supporting farms in Europe to improve wider sustainability in agricultural systems. With a track of project experience, she strives to bridge socioeconomics and agroecology to assess the existing economic and policy frameworks. She increasingly researches questions spanning Europe. In MaRVIC, she coordinates contributions by CZU associated with the test case in arable and grassland.

Mansoor Maitah

Mansoor Maitah is a full professor at the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague. He leads an interdisciplinary research team focusing on economic policies and resource economics. The areas of his interest include cost-benefit and cost effectiveness analysis; resource pricing and the valuation of environmental goods. In Marvic, he is employing a wealth of expertize in contributing to the task of assessing the socioeconomics of financial mechanisms for carbon farming.

Jose A. Gómez

Jose A. Gómez is a scientist at the CSIC, with expertise in soil and water conservation in agricultural areas. He combines modelling and with field experiments to evaluate the effect of different soil management strategies on erosion control, soil quality and provision of other ecosystems services. His main role in the project is to overall coordination of the CSIC team in MARVIC, evaluating the effect of different management strategies in agricultural and agroforestry systems on carbon sequestration.

Laura Martínez García

Biography not available yet.

Jorge Álvaro-Fuentes

Jorge is a Research Scientist at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in which he coordinates the research group "Soil management and Global Change" focused on the effects of agricultural management on the carbon and nitrogen dynamics in the soil-plant-atmosphere interphase in Mediterranean agroecosystems.

Milagros Torrús Castillo

Milagros Torrús Castillo specialises in topics related to balance and carbon footprint, specifically in olive groves, although she also studies the application of organic amendments on the physicochemical properties of soils.

Klaus Butterbach-Bahl

Klaus Butterbach-Bahl Lis the leader of the Center for Research in Sustainable Agriculture (Land-CRAFT) rooted at the Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University, Denmark. His research interest is on optimized land use and management. He is a biogeochemist by training with extensive experiences in measurement and modeling of C, N and water fluxes and bio, hydro and atmosphere exchange processes. Within MARVIC, KBB is co-leading WP4 and actively involved in WP3.

Iris Vogeler

Iris Vogeler is a Senior Scientist in the Department of Agroecology at AU. Her research interest is the interaction between climate, soil, plants, and animals in agro-ecosystems with a focus on integrated analysis and modelling to better understand the relevant processes and feedbacks, including nutrients and greenhouse gases. Her goal is to enhance farm management and contribute to sustainable production through informed policy decisions. Within MARVIC, she is the Task leader of 3.4.

Sofia Biffi

Sofia Biffi is a Postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University. Her research falls within agro-ecology and she is interested soil properties in sustainable management systems, soil organic carbon stocks assessment, agri-environment schemes impact and uptake, and farmland biodiversity. Her role within the project bridges between different WPs at Aarhus University. Her main contributions are to assess data availability for soil organic carbon modelling within MRV systems in WP2, and to develop guidelines for model calibration and validation in WP3.

Gary J. Lanigan

Gary J. Lanigan specializes in researching and developing mitigation strategies for greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. He focuses on how land management and use changes affect nitrous oxide, carbon, and ammonia fluxes. With MARVIC, he is leading model development of MRV system for quantifying greenhouse gases and soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration in peatlands in Ireland.

Suman K. Sourav

Suman K. Sourav is a post-doctoral researcher at Teagasc, specializing in estimating greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes in cropland, dairy, and beef farms. He is also experienced in supervised Land Use Land Cover (LULC) classification and developing interfaces based on Python code for automated data entry in GHG models such as Cool Farm Tool (CFT) and DNDC. In MARVIC, he will primarily contribute to WP3 by simulating peatland data in the MRV system.

Saw Min

Saw Min is a post-doctoral researcher at Teagasc, specializing in quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes in cropland, dairy, and beef farms. He is also experienced in micrometeorogical measurements and is processing data from the eight peat EC towers in Ireland . In MARVIC, he will primarily contribute to WP2 and 3 by providing verification data in the MRV system.

Éric Ceschia

Éric Ceschia, an INRAE Senior Scientist at CESBIO in France, focuses on comparing climate mitigation strategies in agriculture, particularly cropland. He analyzes biogeochemical and biogeophysical contributions to net radiative forcing from changes in agricultural management. Éric employs in-situ observations, remote sensing, and crop modeling to map cropland C budgets and albedo effects at high resolution across large areas, utilizing Sentinel satellite data.

Laure Bamière

Laure Bamière, an agro-economist at INRAE's Joint Research Unit "Paris-Saclay Applied Economics", specialises in economic modeling. With expertise in agriculture, energy, and environment, her research focuses on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing carbon sinks in agriculture. She co-led national studies on GHG emission reduction opportunities and carbon sequestration in soils. Involved in projects like CLAND and EJP Soil, she contributes significantly to understanding sustainable agricultural practices.

Suzanne Reynders

Suzanne Reynders possesses a dual background in science and management, with degrees in agronomy and plant breeding alongside business education. She's led numerous European and international projects, notably in INRAE and INRIA. Reynders co-leads WP6 in Marvic, focusing on stakeholder engagement and communication, utilizing Impact4Soil from ORCaSa. She also connects Marvic with EJP Soil, FAIRCARBON, and global initiatives.

Kamel Elouhichi

Kamel Elouhichi is an agricultural economist at INRAE, specializes in quantitative analysis of agricultural and environmental policies, particularly the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. In MARVIC, he contributes to WP5 by leveraging his expertise in bio-economic modeling to evaluate the impacts of Carbon Farming and MRV on arable farming in France.

Alar Astover

Alar Astover is Professor in Soil Science. His research and teaching are focused on soil-water-plant interactions, carbon and nutrient cycles in agroecosystems. Ongoing projects are focused mainly in soil to carbon management practices and accounting. He is responsible for Estonian test case studies in MARVIC project.

Karin Kauer

Karin Kauer is a senior researcher in Soil Science. Her research focuses on the composition of soil organic matter and its transformation under different tillage methods. She also models soil carbon dynamics to project future carbon storage potential and to assess long-term carbon sequestration in soils. Within MARVIC she contributes to WP3.

Jordi Escuer-Gatius

Jordi Escuer-Gatius is a researcher at the Estonian University of Life Sciences. His research has been primarily focused on nitrous oxide fluxes from arable soils and emissions mitigation, but he is also interested in nutrient cycling in ecosystems, soil organic carbon modeling and carbon sequestration.

Elena Larysch

Elena Larysch, dendroecologist with expertise in agroforestry systems, focuses on tree growth and carbon allocation in the xylem on different spatial (from the cell to the whole tree) and temporal levels (daily to decadal). LUST agroforestry leader, contributing the woody crops perspective to the project and collecting agroforestry knowledge in the LUST team.

Christopher Morhart

Christopher Morhart has many years of experience in the field of agroforestry research. His special interest is the structure and function of trees and shrubs as well as their influence on agricultural crops in agroforestry systems. Supporting the LUST agroforestry lead, contributing the woody crops perspective to the project and collecting agroforestry knowledge in the LUST team.

Edouard Lanckriet

Edouard Lanckriet is an agronomist engineer and PhD in development economics. He is Strategy Director and carbon farming expert at AGROSOLUTIONS Consulting. Edouard is leading Agrosolutions consulting work in MARVIC : defining rules and guiding principles of the European carbon farming certification framework (WP 1), and contribution to all work packages of the project.

Célia Ruau

Célia Ruau is an agricultural engineer. At AGROSOLUTIONS Consulting she supports all kind of agricultural players in the low-carbon transition, from defining their strategy to monitoring, reporting and verification. She also works on drafting carbon farming methodologies. For MARVIC she is in charge of the review of quality criteria.

Marine De La Sayette

Marine De La Sayette has a degree in Environmental Science, Imperial College, London. She worked 4 years with agri-food and cosmetics companies on their climate strategy, and with farms to help them implementing agro-ecological practices. She is now a Senior Consultant at Agrosolutions Consulting, in MARVIC she analyzes CF rules and guiding principles of international carbon farming schemes.

Romane Jubera

Romane Jubera is an agronomist engineer specialised on environmental sciences applied to agriculture. At AGROSOLUTIONS Consulting, she works with all kind types of clients from the agricultural community to support them defining their climate change mitigation pathways and engaging action. In Marvic, she contributes to WP1 through a thorough analyse of existing MRV frameworks for carbon removals.

Lorette Lorand

Lorette Lorand has a degree in Agroecology and Organic Agriculture with Wageningen University and Research (NL) and Isara (FR). Lorette joined AGROSOLUTIONS Consulting to work on decarbonizing agriculture. In Marvic, she contributes to WP1 through a thorough analyse of existing MRV frameworks for carbon removals, focusing first on baselines.

Silvia Coderoni

Silvia Coderoni is an environmental and agricultural economist at UNITE, specialising in farm-level sustainability assessments, climate change mitigation in agriculture, Common Agricultural Policy evaluations, circular economy, and sustainable consumption. As a task leader for T5.4, she guides the participatory policy design of MRV systems to inform cost-effective regulatory schemes through a collaborative policy coherence assessment involving relevant stakeholders.

Berit Hasler

Berit Hasler is an environmental economist, experienced in integrating economic understanding and modelling in cross-disciplinary cooperation with natural scientists. She has recently co-developed an integrated environmental-economic model for assessing trade-offs and synergies in achieving climate, nutrient and biodiversity objectives cost-effectively in Danish agriculture. In MARVIC she is leading WP5.

Jens Leifeld

Jens Leifeld is heading the research group Climate and Agriculture at Agroscope in Zurich, Switzerland. His research is on soil organic matter stability and transformation in soils and mitigation options for reducing GHG emissions from agriculturally managed mineral and organic soils. Within MARVIC, Flora Desmet and him will calculate the radiative forcing of various carbon farming practices with the goal to evaluate and inform carbon farming schemes in terms of varying underlying project durations and possible non-permanence of measures.

Flora Desmet

Flora Desmet is a researcher working in the climate and agriculture group at Agroscope and has a background (PhD) in climate sciences and regional ocean modeling. Her current research focuses on the climate benefit of carbon farming solutions. Within MARVIC, she contributes to WP4 where she calculates the radiative forcing of various carbon farming practices, accounting for possible non-permanency of the measures and trade-offs between greenhouse gas.

Lucia Perugini

Expert on Carbon farming Certification and LULUCF at the European Environment Agency. PhD in forest ecology with scientific background in forestry and climate change. She worked at CMCC, Italy (2013-23) involved several national and European research projects related to LULUCF sector, carbon markets and relevant links between the scientific and policy communities. She was the Italian delegate at the UNFCCCC negotiations (2003-23) dealing with  CDM, agriculture, LULUCF and REDD+.

Gerry Lawson

Gerry Lawson has a background in tropical/temperate forestry, ecology and agroforestry modelling. He has worked on EU research programmes since FP1 and now serves as Policy Officer for the European Agroforestry Federation, where he interfaces with EU and national policies related to agroforestry, forestry, climate and environment.