Carbon Management

Restoring Degraded Lands: Innovations in Carbon Management and Climate Change Mitigation

Land degradation substantially reduces the capability of land to ensure ecological, social and economic benefits. Human induced land use change and natural disasters have contributed extensively to land degradation leading to biodiversity loss, reduce food security and undermining a range of ecosystem services. Moreover, climate change will exacerbate this degradation process by increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme climate events such as drought, heatwaves and wildfire. This leads to significant alteration in ecosystem functioning, terrestrial carbon pool and greenhouses gas emissions.

Restoration of degraded lands can be a cost-effective solution to halt and reverse the degradation process as well as combating climate change and loss of ecosystem services. Land restoration can be done through forestation, soil-water conservation and use of sustainable land management practices. This not only help reviving degraded ecosystem but also provides socio-economic benefits to local community. However, successful restoration efforts require integration of scientific and indigenous knowledge, stakeholder perspective of restoration, and long-term investment from government and NGOs.

Approximately 25% of the global population relies directly on land that is undergoing rapid degradation. Expansion of agricultural lands, deforestation, excessive use of chemicals, wildfire, and mining activities are the major causes of land degradation. Moreover, these activities significantly reduce carbon storage and increase carbon emissions into the atmosphere. According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), 100 million hectares of productive lands were degraded annually between 2015 and 2019. If these trends continue, we need to restore 1.5 billion hectares of land by 2030 to achieve land degradation neutrality and other SDG targets. Restoration of degraded land is also essential to maintain global carbon stock and climate change mitigation. Therefore, this Collection aims to report the recent scientific advances in land restoration and innovative restoration techniques for managing carbon stock across terrestrial ecosystems. Further, this will facilitate the identification and implementation of evidence-based land restoration strategies that enhance ecosystem resilience under changing climate conditions.

This Article Collection for Carbon Management will focus on recent advances in carbon management through land restoration. This includes strategies that integrate land restoration, climate change mitigation, and sustainable management of degraded lands. It will highlight research on ecological restoration techniques, technological innovations in wasteland management, biochar applications, policy mechanisms, carbon accounting in restored ecosystem and market-driven solutions for carbon sequestration and climate adaptation.

Topics and subtopics include, but are not limited to:

Carbon Sequestration in Restored Land

• Innovative strategies for restoring degraded lands (post-mining, wildfire, hurricanes, pastureland etc), with an emphasis on assisted restoration, soil carbon dynamics, microbial recovery, and the use of biochar and other organic amendments to enhance carbon storage and promote climate change mitigation

Wildfire-Affected Landscapes Management

• Strategies for restoring carbon stock in fire-impacted ecosystems, with a focus on thinning and prescribed burns

Intensively Managed Grazing Land

• Insights into the management of pasture lands for carbon sequestration, with nature-based solutions to manage pastureland for the future

Sustainable Forest Operations for Degraded Land Restoration

• Low-impact harvesting techniques to reduce emissions and maintain carbon stocks, with biomass utilization strategies such as biochar production, bioenergy, and engineered wood products, supported by remote sensing and digital forestry tools for monitoring forest carbon dynamics

Carbon Accounting and Market Mechanisms for Restored Lands

• Carbon accounting in restored landscapes, investigating the role of carbon markets, ecosystem service, and corporate sustainability initiatives. Explores how to integrate land restoration into national and global climate policies

­­All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo a full peer-review; the Guest Advisors for this Collection will not be handling the manuscripts (unless they are an Editorial Board member).

Please review the journal scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is February 1, 2026.

Please contact Kara Roberts (kara.roberts@taylorandfrancis.com) with any queries and discount codes regarding this Article Collection.

Dr. Dipita Ghosh is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Ecological Restoration Institute, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff. Her research integrates biochar applications, biomass utilization, and land restoration, with a focus on improving soil health, carbon sequestration, and ecosystem resilience. Dr. Ghosh has contributed extensively to understanding the role of biochar in forest restoration and soil remediation, particularly in the context of mine land reclamation. Her work bridge scientific knowledge with practical solutions for sustainable land management and climate change mitigation.

Dr. Adarsh Kumar is an environmental scientist specializing in the B3 approach (Biowaste-Biochar-Bioremediation) with expertise in heavy metal remediation, biochar applications, and sustainable agriculture. He has reviewed around 50 articles for top journals (Elsevier, Springer, Taylor & Francis) and presented research at international conferences in Russia, Spain, Poland, Albania, and India. With an h-index of 27 and over 1,700 citations, he has published 58 WoS/Scopus-indexed articles and six book chapters. Currently, he is exploring a new B3 approach (Bioethanol-Biochar-Bioplastics from seaweeds) for sustainable development. A life member of the Indian Science Congress Association, he actively collaborates globally and has served as a guest editor for Plants and Microorganisms.

Dr. Jitendra Ahirwal is an assistant professor of Environmental Science at the University of Allahabad Prayagraj, India. He undertook a Ph.D. in Environmental Science at the Indian Institute of Technology (ISM) Dhanbad. His research predominantly focuses on ecological restoration of degraded lands, carbon sequestration, and land use change. He is currently investigating the impact of extreme climate events on carbon cycling and its components in semi-arid regions.

Conflict of Interest Disclosure

The Guest Advisors do not have any Conflicts of Interest to disclose.