We are pleased to draw your attention towards our upcoming Special Issue: ‘Debris-covered glaciers: formation, governing processes, present status and future directions’ in the Frontiers of Earth Sciences journal. The abstract submission (deadline September 23, 2020) is now open. If you intend to submit an abstract it would help the editorial team significantly if you could post an abstract outline or draft in advance of the final deadline as this helps us gauge the interest.


Debris-covered glaciers (DCGs) are important elements of the cryosphere and unique in their own right. Evolution of DCGs is complicated, ambiguous and differs substantially from that of clean-ice glaciers. Understanding this evolution is important because DCGs will play an increasingly important role in supplying and regulating water supplies for large parts of the world's population.

Past decades have seen an upsurge in research related to multiple aspects of DCGs, yet many knowledge gaps remain. Indeed, it has been 20 years since the last focused publication on debris-covered glaciers (Nakawo, Raymond and Fountain, 2000), and this special issue offers an opportunity to craft a collection that summarizes the state-of-the-art of our understanding.

Accordingly, with a view of consolidating the existing know-how and specifically addressing some of the existing research gaps in this area, we welcome submissions to our special issue in the following major themes:

We would like to highlight that receiving sufficient submissions opens the door to Frontiers creating an e-book of our research topic, and we therefore aim to have at least 10-15 contributions for this to make it a strong collection.

We would particularly like to leverage the community established through the IACS working group on debris covered glaciers and have therefore extended this invitation to all participants in this WG. However, we would also like your help  in reaching non-WG members. Please therefore forward the invitation to your wider network, as appropriate, to help seek the most diverse and rich set of contributions possible.


Please do not hesitate to contact any of the editorial team if you have questions.


The abstract submission (deadline September 23, 2020) is now open and live at the Frontier’s website. If you intend to submit an abstract it would help the editorial team significantly if you could post an abstract outline or draft in advance of the final deadline as this helps us gauge the interest.


We look forward to your contribution!


Sincerely,


Editors: Aparna Shukla (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), Lindsey Nicholson (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), Argha Banerjee (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), Koji Fujita (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), Duncan Quincey (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).