Category: Google Earth Engine

NICFI’s satellite imagery of the global tropics now available in Earth Engine.

NICFI’s satellite imagery of the global tropics now available in Earth Engine for analysis.

By Brian Sullivan, Sr. Program Manager, Google Earth Engine.

NICFI’s satellite imagery
NICFI’s satellite imagery.

NICFI’s satellite imagery of the global tropics now available in Earth Engine for analysis.

From its inception over 10 years ago. Google Earth Engine’s mission has been to create a global-scale platform for Earth science data and analysis to further address the most pressing environmental and societal issues we face. This week. In partnership with Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI). Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT). And Planet. We are proud to have launched new imagery that enables the Earth Engine community to tackle these challenges.

NICFI’s satellite imagery of the global tropics now available in Earth Engine for analysis.

In September 2020, Norway’s Ministry of Climate. And Environment announced ~$43M of high-resolution tropical satellite monitoring to aid efforts in halting the destruction of the world’s rainforests. The cost of commercial satellite imagery has long prohibited many from employing it in their work. Expanding access to high resolution imagery enables greater use by academics, nonprofits, Indigenous communities, governments and forest managers. Journalists. And the private sector. The Planet Basemaps from the NICFI Tropical Forest program are now available in Google Earth Engine for analysis and monitoring related to forest conservation and restoration, climate change. Biodiversity, sustainable development. And more. (Learn how to get access.)

Google Earth Engine’s three interconnected pillars are perfectly aligned to enhance the opportunities provided with the NICFI Tropical Forest program.

Pillar 1: Data Catalog.


By adding NICFI Planet Basemaps to Google Earth Engine’s public data catalog of 700+ curated geospatial datasets, it provides unprecedented, high resolution (4.77m), deep time series (Dec 2015 to Aug 2020 biannual. Sept 2020 onward monthly). 4-band (RGB+NIR), coverage of 94 countries across the global tropics. No other corpus of broadly licensed, commercial. Analysis-ready imagery of this scope or scale exists today.

NICFI’s satellite imagery of the global tropics now available in Earth Engine for analysis.

NICFI’s satellite imagery
NICFI’s satellite imagery

Pillar 2: Geospatial Computation Platform.


Given the size of the data involved. About one petabyte. It is crucial to bring storage and processing together in one platform to enable global scale. Deep time series analysis. Similarly, as imagery resolution increases, so do the opportunities for finer granularity classifications. And object detection, but traditional pixel based methodologies fall short and new machine learning techniques are needed. Visual access to Planet’s tropical Basemaps have already begun to enable new forms of forestry verification and monitoring. But the next level of impacts will come from enabling new insights through analysis and new machine learning approaches.

Pillar 3: Collaborative Ecosystem.


Earth Engine’s roots began in academic forestry research, producing first of their kind public datasets like Global Forest Change. Funding from NICFI and others allowed nonprofits like World Resources Institute (WRI) to create policy and programmatic efforts like Global Forest Watch. Which in turn enabled journalists to share these insights with the world in a clear, actionable fashion. The ecosystem continued to grow as government and UN agencies furthered forestry research and developed operational workflows. And capacity building powered by Earth Engine. Now, new partnerships and engagements from the private sector are expanding the Earth Engine ecosystem as they look to build deforestation free supply chains, utilizing the power of markets to create a sustainable future.

The NICFI Tropical Forest program launch in Earth Engine brings a new class of global imagery under a purpose-driven license, combined with the latest satellite cloud computing and machine learning analysis platform. In an ever-evolving ecosystem of researchers. Nonprofits, journalists, and the private sector. Google is proud to continue to play a role in advancing partnerships and programs to enable insights and outcomes that reduce and reverse tropical forest loss.

Watch the launch announcement during the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) with KSAT. Planet, and Google and learn how partners like United Nations Food & Agriculture are already using the data in Earth Engine.

NICFI’s satellite imagery of the global tropics now available in Earth Engine for analysis.

Register for access at Planet’s NICFI page:

that also contains a program overview, FAQs, and terms of use. Planet also maintains a Developer Resource Center for Earth Engine
After school this teen tracks climate change

A celebration of clouds from space

Source: Google Earth nicfis satellite imagery of the global tropics now available in earth engine for analysis

High-Res Imagery for Tropical Forests: NICFI Data in Google Earth Engine

Google Earth Engine’s mission has been to create a global-scale platform for Earth science data and analysis to further address the most pressing environmental and societal issues we face. Similarly, as imagery resolution increases. So do the opportunities for finer granularity classifications and object detection, but traditional pixel based methodologies fall short and new machine learning techniques are needed. Watch the launch announcement during the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) with KSAT, Planet.

From its inception over 10 years ago, Google Earth Engine’s mission has been to create a global-scale platform for Earth science data and analysis to further address the most pressing environmental and societal issues we face. Similarly. As imagery resolution increases, so do the opportunities for finer granularity classifications and object detection, but traditional pixel based methodologies fall short and new machine learning techniques are needed. Watch the launch announcement during the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) with KSAT.

Google Earth Engine’s mission has been to create a global-scale platform for Earth science data and analysis to further address the most pressing environmental and societal issues we face. Similarly. As imagery resolution increases, so do the opportunities for finer granularity classifications and object detection, but traditional pixel based methodologies fall short and new machine learning techniques are needed. Watch the launch announcement during the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) with KSAT.

Google Earth Engine’s mission has been to create a global-scale platform for Earth science data and analysis to further address the most pressing environmental and societal issues we face. Similarly. As imagery resolution increases, so do the opportunities for finer granularity classifications and object detection, but traditional pixel based methodologies fall short and new machine learning techniques are needed. Watch the launch announcement during the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) with KSAT.

Google Earth Engine’s mission has been to create a global-scale platform for Earth science data and analysis to further address the most pressing environmental and societal issues we face. Similarly, as imagery resolution increases. So do the opportunities for finer granularity classifications and object detection, but traditional pixel based methodologies fall short and new machine learning techniques are needed. Watch the launch announcement during the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) with KSAT, Planet.

From its inception over 10 years ago, Google Earth Engine’s mission has been to create a global-scale platform for Earth science data and analysis to further address the most pressing environmental and societal issues we face. Similarly. As imagery resolution increases, so do the opportunities for finer granularity classifications and object detection, but traditional pixel based methodologies fall short and new machine learning techniques are needed. Watch the launch announcement during the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) with KSAT.

Google Earth Engine’s mission has been to create a global-scale platform for Earth science data and analysis to further address the most pressing environmental and societal issues we face. Similarly. As imagery resolution increases, so do the opportunities for finer granularity classifications and object detection, but traditional pixel based methodologies fall short and new machine learning techniques are needed. Watch the launch announcement during the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) with KSAT.

Google Earth Engine’s mission has been to create a global-scale platform for Earth science data and analysis to further address the most pressing environmental and societal issues we face. Similarly. As imagery resolution increases, so do the opportunities for finer granularity classifications and object detection, but traditional pixel based methodologies fall short and new machine learning techniques are needed. Watch the launch announcement during the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) with KSAT.

X) NICFI’s satellite imagery of the global tropics now available in Earth

Y) NICFI’s satellite imagery of the global tropics now available in Earth

Z) NICFI’s satellite imagery of the global tropics now available in Earth

A) NICFI’s satellite imagery of the global tropics now available in Earth

B) NICFI’s satellite imagery of the global tropics now available in Earth

C) NICFI’s satellite imagery of the global tropics now available in Earth

The nature of water unveiling the most detailed view of water

The nature of water unveiling the most detailed view of water on Earth.

Chief Extraterrestrial Observer, Earth Engine.

The nature of water: unveiling the most detailed view of water on Earth.

In 1926, the Mississippi river flooded to its highest level in history, destroying towns and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.

Since then. Dams and thousands of kilometers of levees have been built to control the mighty Mississippi. 60 years on. Another effect of the historic flood is becoming apparent. As the river has become calmer. It now also carries a lot less of the sediment that created and replenished the delta. Without that, more than 13 thousand square kilometers of the delta — an area 10 times the size of London is slowly slipping into the Gulf of Mexico. Once again the river is threatening to displace thousands and drown the fragile delta wetlands.

Mississippi delta sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. Blue is water.

White is land. Red shows areas of transition. (Source: EC JRC / Google).

The nature of water: unveiling the most detailed view of water

The change of the Mississippi over decades is just one of the hundreds of stories of similarly dramatic change around the globe;. From the draining of the Aral Sea in the Middle East for crops. To the effects of dam construction in China, or the impacts of the multi-year drought on the Western U.S.  Water has been shaping our planet since it was formed, and still plays a direct and crucial role in all of our lives.

  • NoneThe Aral Sea. Kazakhstan
The nature of water
The nature of water
The nature of water

Thanks to a partnership between the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and Google.

We can now get a view into the past three decades of water on the surface of Earth and see how stories like these have shaped the world over time. In unprecedented detail.   

This project has been a monumental undertaking. And was made possible by new data processing methods. Running the analysis on thousands of high performance computers at the same time. It took three years to download 1.8 petabytes of data from the USGS/NASA Landsat satellite program and prepare that for analysis. Each pixel in 3 million satellite images. Going all the way back to 1984. Was examined by a computer algorithm developed by the Joint Research Center running on the Google Earth Engine platform. More than 10 million hours of computing time was needed for this, roughly equivalent to a modern 2-core computer running day and night for 600 years.  

Karkheh River in Iran backing up behind a dam from 1984 to 2015 (Source: EC JRC / Google)

The results for the first time allow us to map and measure changes in the water surface over time with a 30-meter accuracy. Month-by-month, over 32 years. Here are some of our findings:  

  • 90 thousand square kilometers of water – the equivalent of half of the lakes in Europe – have vanished altogether.
  • The continuing drying up of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan accounts for the biggest loss in the world.
  • Iran and Afghanistan lost over a half. Iraq over a third of its water area.
  • Although the area covered by water in the U.S. has overall increased a little, a combination of drought and sustained demand for water have seen six western states, Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, account for a third of the loss in U.S. water surface.

Lakes throughout the Tibetan Plateau have expanded in size over the past 30 years. (Source: EC JRC / Google)

The research findings and the maps. Published today in the journal Nature. Are available for you to explore on this new website.  The data are also freely available in Google Earth Engine for further research, use. And download.  These new maps, statistics and the stories of change they reveal provide essential information which can aid global water security. Agricultural planning. Disaster preparedness, public health. Climate understanding and more. Offering the most detailed view to date of one of our planet’s most vital resources.

With contributions from Alan Belward, Andrew Cottam and Jean-François Pekel, Joint Research Centre. European Commission.

Insidious Rising – Earthtopomaps

Since then. Another effect of the historic flood is becoming apparent.

It now also carries a lot less of the sediment that created and replenished the delta. Without that, more than 13 thousand square kilometers of the delta — an area 10 times the size of London is slowly slipping into the Gulf of Mexico. Once again the river is threatening to displace thousands and drown the fragile delta wetlands. The change of the Mississippi over decades is just one of the hundreds of stories of similarly dramatic change around the globe;. Although the area covered by water in the U.S. has overall increased a little.

Since then. Another effect of the historic flood is becoming apparent.

It now also carries a lot less of the sediment that created and replenished the delta. Without that, more than 13 thousand square kilometers of the delta — an area 10 times the size of London is slowly slipping into the Gulf of Mexico. Once again the river is threatening to displace thousands and drown the fragile delta wetlands. The change of the Mississippi over decades is just one of the hundreds of stories of similarly dramatic change around the globe;. Although the area covered by water in the U.S. has overall increased a little.

It now also carries a lot less of the sediment that created and replenished the delta. Without that, more than 13 thousand square kilometers of the delta — an area 10 times the size of London is slowly slipping into the Gulf of Mexico. Once again the river is threatening to displace thousands and drown the fragile delta wetlands. The change of the Mississippi over decades is just one of the hundreds of stories of similarly dramatic change around the globe;. Although the area covered by water in the U.S. has overall increased a little.

Earthtopomaps.com

X) The nature of water

Y) The nature of water

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