Daily 30 m Snow Cover Dataset for the Qilian Mountains and Adjacent Regions (2013–2025) Derived from the HDSR Framework

This dataset is associated with the research article entitled “Hillslope-Scale Daily Snow Cover Reconstruction in Complex Mountains: a Novel Framework Integrating Long-Term Snow Persistence .” It provides daily snow cover data at a spatial resolution of 30 m over the Qilian Mountains in the northeastern Qinghai–Tibet Plateau, covering an area of approximately 536,018 km². The dataset spans the period from 1 September 2013 to 31 August 2025. In the dataset, pixel values are defined as follows: 0 indicates snow-free areas, 1 represents snow-covered areas, and 2 denotes water bodies. Water bodies were masked using the MODIS MCD12Q1 (2020) land cover product. Two aspects related to data quality should be noted. (1) Salt lakes located in the southwestern part of the study area may be spectrally confused with snow cover, leading to potential misclassification. (2) As discussed in the associated study, the quality of the input MODIS snow cover data has an influence on the reconstruction results, particularly due to the issue of cloud–snow confusion. Overall, these factors have a limited impact on the dataset, but should be taken into account when interpreting specific cases.