To limit global warming below 2°C, a drastic overall reduction from current CO2 emissions is needed. We argue that scientists should also participate in this effort in their professional activity and especially Earth scientists, on the grounds of maintaining credibility and leading by example. The strategies and measures to reach a low-carbon scientific activity require detailed estimates of the current footprint of laboratories. Here, we present the footprint of six laboratories in Earth, environmental and space sciences, representative of the AGU community, with a comprehensive scope also including international research infrastructures. We propose a novel method to attribute the footprint of any research infrastructure to any given research laboratory. Our results highlight that most laboratories have annual footprints reaching 10-20 tonnes CO2 equivalent per person (tCO2e.p-1), dominated by infrastructures and specifically satellites in three cases (with footprints up to 11 tCO2e.p-1 or 60%), while air-travels and purchases remain within the top three sources in all cases (2-4 tCO2e p-1 or 10-30% each). Consequently, footprints related to commuting and laboratory functioning, about 2 tCO2e.p-1 (20%) or less, are relatively modest compared to infrastructures, purchases and air-travels. Thus, reduction measures ignoring infrastructures may not be able to achieve reductions larger than 20 to 35% even with flight quotas and a substantial reduction of purchases. Finally, we also discuss how a deeper transformation of scientific practices, away from a fast science ideal, could make Earth and environmental sciences more sustainable and at the forefront of a rapid and drastic social bifurcation.

Hydrological conditions (i.e., high-flow versus low-flow) in peatland drainage streams influence both the quantity of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) exports and dissolved organic matter (DOM) composition. Yet, our knowledge on DOM fate after exports from the peatland remains limited while this highly reactive component sustains emissions and exports of carbon dioxide (CO2) from streams through degradation processes. The present study demonstrates the relationships between DOM composition evolution and catchment hydrological conditions along a 3 km long headwater stream running through a boreal peatland, from its source to the outlet. Our results show that hydrological conditions significantly influenced DOM composition evolution along the stream. DOM exported during high-flow conditions presented a composition similar to peat porewater in terms of DOC:DON ratio and aromaticity, but a lower average molecular weight, indicating preferential exports of low molecular weight DOM recently produced in the acrotelm. The DOM composition changed little along the stream during high-flow as it was rapidly flushed downstream. During low-flow conditions, DOM composition evolved along the stream in contrast to high-flow with a strong increase in DOM aromaticity and molecular weight along the stream. These changes were significantly correlated to the water residence time in the stream and to the estimated proportion of mineralized DOC to total DOC flux exported at the stream outlet. These results highlight the importance of hydrological conditions on DOM dynamics as DOM was locally mineralized during low-flow conditions, when DOC exports were low, while mineralization processes happened downstream under high-flow conditions which favored important DOC exports.