Pia Benaud

Profile

I joined the University of Leeds as a Research Fellow in Peatland Monitoring Data in April 2025, where I am based in the School of Geography.

Alongside this role I am working on a British Ecological Society funded Policy Fellowship at Natural England, and am employed as a Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. I have been employed as a Research Fellow at Exeter since 2022, after three years in different roles as a Postdoctoral Research Associate.

Research interests

I am interested in how nature-based solutions, through restoring natural habitat structure and function, can mitigate land degradation issues, supporting nature recovery and improving the provision of ecosystem services. I take an interdisciplinary approach to my research, combining field and lab based monitoring data with remote sensing technologies, to build a spatial and temporal understanding of environmental change.

I work within the European Commission funded WaterLANDS project, where I am collaborating with project partners across the Great North Bog, and the peatland restoration community in England more widely, to improve our understanding of the impacts of peatland restoration interventions.

Through analysing existing monitoring data collected by mulitple peatland restoration projects, the knowledge gained will contribute to the legacy of the WaterLANDS project, allowing the transfer of peatland restoration knowledge across Europe and supporting the upscaling of peatland restoration.

Qualifications

• PhD Physical Geography, University of Exeter
• BSc (Hons) Environmental Science, Griffith University, with year at University of East Anglia.