DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15441000
title: DebDaB: A database of supraglacial debris thickness and physical properties

description: DebDaB: A database of supraglacial debris thickness and physical properties

DebdaB is a database of measured and reported physical properties and thickness of supraglacial debris that is openly available and open to community submissions.

The majority of the database (90%) is compiled from 172 sources in the literature, and the remaining 10% has not been published before. DebDaB contains 8,286 data entries for supraglacial debris thickness, of which 1,852 entries also include sub-debris ablation rates, 167 data entries of thermal conductivity of debris, 157 of aerodynamic surface roughness length, 77 of debris albedo, 56 of debris emissivity and 37 of debris porosity. The data are distributed over 83 glaciers in 13 regions in the Global Terrestrial Network for Glaciers. 

This is version 2 of the dataset, corresponding to the revised version of the database after peer-review of its accompanying "Data descriptor manuscript" submitted for publication to the scientific journal "Earth System Science Data (ESSD)" from Copernicus Publications. The preprint is available at https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-559 

DebDaB version 2 consists of the following files:



DebDaB_v2.zip : The actual DebDaB database, provided as a navigable Open Document Spreadsheet (.ods) with spreadsheet tabs for each of the debris properties. Additionally, the database is also provided as separate .csv files for each debris property, and as a GeoPackage (.gpkg). 

Readme_files.zip: A .txt file for each of the debris property tabs, describing all the fields in each tab. 

Templates_for_data_submission.zip: Templates (.csv files and additionally .xlsx files) for data submission for each of the debris properties in DebDaB. Data submissiosn to DebDaB should be sent to debriscoveredglaciers@ista.ac.at. 

DebDaB_data_sources.pdf: List of DebDaB sources from published literature. 

DebDaB_data_sources.bib: BibTeX list of DebDaB sources from published literature. 

Manuscript_codes.zip: The codes to download and process the data to generate the figures for data descriptor manuscript on ESSD.


The data descriptor manuscript is in open review stage at: https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2024-559/ 

DebDaB is open to new data submissions, and therefore future data submissions of previously unpublished data to DebDaB will entail co-authorship on the DebDaB database on Zenodo. 

According to the authors’ understanding of FAIR principles, authors of published literature and published data, that:



Correct existing data within DebDaB, in case of errors

Send the raw data from digitised figures

Submit additional data that was previously unavailable (for example, accurate coordinates or additional data or metadata which is not already available)


will have the right to be added as co-authors on the database in Zenodo. The authors are working to reevaluate their policies to conform to changes or unusual circumstances in authorship contributions, and are happy to involve eager people in the core team.

 

How to submit data: Please use the templates provided in the database files for data submissions and send it to debriscoveredglaciers@ista.ac.at. Authors who submit data will be asked to fill in a form regarding authorship contributions. 

Important note on citations: DebDaB data users must cite the data descriptor manuscript (Fontrodona-Bach et al. 2025), the DebDaB zenodo repository(Groeneveld et al., 2025), and the original data sources when using the database, given that DebDaB is mostlya compilation of previously published data. To facilitate the citations of original data sources, each of the data entries in DebDaB contains the correspondingoriginal reference and corresponding DOI.

Manuscript citation: Fontrodona-Bach, A., Groeneveld, L., Miles, E., McCarthy, M., Shaw, T., Melo Velasco, V., and Pellicciotti, F.: DebDaB: A database of supraglacial debris thickness and physical properties, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss. [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-559, in review, 2025.

Zenodo citation: Groeneveld, L., Fontrodona-Bach, A., Miles, E., McCarthy, M., Melo Velasco, V., Shaw, T., Pellicciotti, F., Bauder, A., Buri, P., Kneib, M., Kumar, A., Mishra, A., & Petersen, L. (2025). DebDaB: A database of supraglacial debris thickness and physical properties (Version v2) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14224835

Original data sources citation: See DebDaB_data_sources.pdf or DebDaB_data_sources.bib

The authors acknowledge the Debris-Covered Glaciers Working Group (DCGWG) from the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS) for setting the stage and drawing together the debris-covered glaciers community to focus on broader needs transcending a specific research topic, and starting the zenodo community on debris-covered glaciers, where this database is hosted. 

Author contributions: The following spreadsheet states the contribution of each of the co-authors on the database:  Author contributions statement (click here)

A description of what each contribution field means is below:



Conceptualisation: This refers to the original idea and shaping of the database and is therefore closed.

Data curation: The data managers of DebDaB. Primarily the quality checks and curation done to all the collected published and unpublished data. It may also include authors who have compiled a lot of measurements from sources the authors did not have, and merged them into DebDaB, or if someone else takes on the role of ingesting/homogenizing data in the future.

Data collection: Field measurements as well as scouring past literature that the authors have missed, digitising sources, or advocating for old missing data sources to be entered into DebDaB.

Formal analysis: In the case of methods being applied to derive debris property values from other measurements, such as the case for surface roughness and thermal conductivity.

Supervision/funding: This refers to funding provided for the generation of DebDaB itself, but also funding for the data collection (measurements).