We are living at a time when there is not only too much carbon but also a lot of words about it, in the air! Discussions and reports on the activities involving carbon and the inconvenient truth about its impacts, consequences, and ramifications are hitting the headlines in all sorts of news media. Climate change, global warming, rising sea levels, the disappearance of lakes, melting of permafrost, shrinking of biodiversity, unprecedentedly frequent occurrences of calamities such as floods, famines, and wildfires, … and many more such adversities that adversely impact the planet and its inhabitants at alarming rates are attributed to carbon! Even political fights at the highest levels with national and global consequences are increasingly being waged around carbon!

The two-week-long Glasgow, UK, climate summit that began on 31 October 2021 and attended by many world leaders is about to conclude as this piece is being written. Several reports indicate that the world is far from reaching a consensus on holding the global temperature below the 1.5 °C target by 2030 to avert the worst impacts of climate change and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by 55% as envisaged in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. It would not be a surprise if the commitments and pledges to reduce emissions to net-zero by 2050 remain unfulfilled and unachievable.

Perhaps the lack of satisfactory progress in “taming” this mega culprit - carbon - despite all these collective efforts, is because we have not yet fully understood the complexity of the problem. Enormous volumes of scientific literature and technical compilations by highly skilled experts are available through numerous journals and other publication outlets. Yet, there may be some key areas that may not have received adequate attention and maybe there is a lack of publication outlets focused on some such key, niche issues. This journal aims to fill in the gap of one such area, which we call carbon footprints. Carbon footprint refers to the emissions of all greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons, and is expressed as the amount (tons) of CO₂ produced during a given period.

Our objective is to advance the understanding of the extent of the carbon footprint associated with various human activities, the patterns and processes governing it, and the nature of interactions between carbon footprint and other environmental factors that influence ecosystem services.

As the awareness about the seriousness of the high carbon footprint is increasing at all local, regional, and global levels, this journal will provide a forum for discussion of the problem and presentation of science-based management approaches to addressing the issues by all stakeholders including the scientific and academic community, environmental managers, policy experts, and others concerned with the sustainable use of environmental resources.

Carbon footprint is a broad topic encompassing major sectors of human activities such as land-use systems, energy, and transportation. The journal will focus primarily on issues related to land-use systems such as agriculture and forestry. Contributions reporting results of investigations on topics of fundamental or applied nature are welcome. Reports presented should be relevant to a context wider than a specific location where the reported study or activity was undertaken and provide new insight or make a significant contribution to the knowledge base.

Welcome to Carbon Footprints!