The object of the present study is to characterize the traces of the Sobolev functions in a sub-Riemannian, or Carnot-Caratheodory space. Such traces are defined in terms of suitable Besov spaces with respect to a measure which is concentrated on a lower dimensional manifold, and which satisfies an Ahlfors type condition with respect to the standard Lebesgue measure. We also study the extension problem for the relevant Besov spaces. Various concrete applications to the setting of Carnot groups are analyzed in detail and an application to the solvability of the subelliptic Neumann problem is presented.