Introduction

to Google
Earth Engine
Zhiqiang Yang
USFS, Rocky Mountain
Research Station

2021 Operational Lidar Inventory Meeting, April 7, 2021

What is Earth Engine

A computation Platform
Tools for analyzing and visualizing
geospatial data at scale

A Data Catalog
50PB archive of satellite imagery and
other geospatial datasets
 What makes src: wikipedia

GEE powerful
Co-located
• Big Data
• Massive Computation
• Scientific Algorithms Gorelick et al. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2017.06.031
Image Credit: Noel Gorelick
Data Catalog
 Massive Data Catalog
• 35 petabytes total
• ~1 petabyte/month
• >700 datasets
• ~100 datasets / year

• Landsat from 1972

• Sentinel 1, 2, 3, 5P
• Many more: topography,
https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets
weather, population, etc
Landsat Derived Products, e.g.

• Burn Area Index

• Enhanced Vegetation Index
• NDVI
• …

Climate Data

A few Examples
Bring your own data
• Shapefiles
• CSV Earth
earthengine upload Engine
• TFRecord
Assets
• GeoTiff
https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/guides/image_upload
https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/guides/importing

Google
Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF Cloud
Storage
Example Applications
Image Credit: Noel Gorelick
 Maupin
LCMS DATA Explorer Map Satellite

Q Search Places +
197
PARAMETERS LCMS Change, Okanogan-Wenatchee NF: 1985
FOSS
Simnasho Slow LosS
LCMS DATА Fast Loss
26 Gain
Antelope Clarno
OGain Year
14
Fast Loss Year VARM SPRINGS 97
RESERVATION Spray
O Slow Loss Year 12

O Land Cover Warm Springs

10

% of Outlined Area
O Land Use 97 Richmond
26
O LCMS Change Time Lapse 8

O LCMS Land Cover Time Lapse Madras

O LCMS Land Use Time Lapse Metblius

Mitchel 26
REFERENCE DATA + Culver
4

26
+

TOOLS 2

Antone
Santiam
Crooked
River Ranch
+
0L
☑ DOWNLOAD DATA 2000
ck Butte 1985 1990 1995 2005 2010 2015 2020
Rancht Year Ochoco
Terrebonne
SUPPORT + National Foręst
26
Si Prineville
Redmond
97

Tumalo
Sout ster
lamgje
ette
al Fores
Alfalfa
Bend 20

Mt Bachelor

1 LEGEND
20
Fast Loss Year
Brothers

1985 2020

Lng: -122.0645, Lat: 45.1909, Elevation: 761.4(m),2498.0(ft),Zoom: 9, 1:2,311,162.30

USDA
Currently active tools: No active tools Queue length for maps from GEE: 0 Number of map layers loading tiles: 0 G ogl Earth Engine
API
 Vector
Powerful API
• Analysis in Python and JavaScript
• Same interface
• Across platform Raster

• Geometry & Feature: buffer, centroid,

intersection, union, transform ...
• FeatureCollection: aggregate, filter, flatten,
merge, sort …
Tabular
 Image: band math, clip, convolution, neighborhood ...

Powerful Image Collection: map, aggregate, filter, mosaic, sort ...

Filter: by bounds, within distance, date, day-of-year ...

API
Reducer: mean, linearRegression, percentile, histogram ….
Join: simple, inner, outer, inverted ...
Kernel: square, circle, gaussian, sobel, kirsch …

(cont.) Classifier: decision tree, GBT, randomForest …

Cluster: kMeans, xMean, Cobweb …
Matrix computation: determinant, decomposition …
Processing Concept: Map
Apply an operation to every element
of a collection (FeatureCollection or
ImageCollection)

For example:
• Compute NDVI for all images in 2018
• Derive area of each feature in a FeatureCollection
• Create monthly max and min temperature

• https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/guides/ic_mapping
• https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/guides/feature_collection_mapping
Processing
Concept: Reduce
Aggregate over a collection or
over a spatial context to derive
summary values.

Reduce Bands Image: Nick Clinton

Reduce Neighborhood
Reduce ImageCollection

https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/guides/reducers_intro
Reducers 48 reducers
• ee.Array.reduce
• ee.List.reduce
• ee.FeatureCollection
• reduceColumns
• reduceToImage
• ee.Image
• reduce
• reduceConnectedComponents
• reduceNeighborhood
• reduceRegion
• reduceRegions
• reduceToVector
• ee.ImageCollection
• reduce
 Interactive
Processing

Visualize data on the fly,

preview analysis results,
GEE query google data catalog

Processing
Mode Batch Processing

Large scale, complex

computation; multi-batching
tasks with a few button
clicks
 https://explorer.earthengine.google.
Earth Engine Explorer com/#workspace
Not actively developed, use the following methods

Code Editor
Accessing https://code.earthengine.google.com

Google Earth
Google Colab https://colab.research.google.com/n

Engine Not covered here

otebooks/intro.ipynb

https://developers.google.com/
REST API earth-engine/reference

Not covered here

Customized Applications
Quick Tour of Code Editor
Spatial Data in GEE
• Vector Data
• ee.Geometry or ee.Feature
• ee.FeatureCollection (multiple features)

• Raster Data
• ee.Image, represents a single image,
usually with multiple band bands
• ee.ImageCollection, a set of images
usually with the same data structure
QGIS with Plugin
APP
Earth Engine App
• Coder interface from Code Editor
• Publish directly from Code Editor
• Share work as web application
https://usfs-larse.earthengine.app/view/mso-app
https://nina.earthengine.app/view/lockdown-pollution
 Sign-up

https://signup.earthengine.google.com
Super useful demonstration code repos
Nick Clinton has put together these very useful learning script

• Basics: JavaScript, data access, visualization, mapping, reducing, compositing

• https://code.earthengine.google.com/?accept_repo=users/nclinton/EE101
• Multi-spectral and multi-temporal classification, parameter tuning
• https://code.earthengine.google.com/?accept_repo=users/nclinton/EE102
• Classification, phenology modeling, terrain visualization, spectral unmixing
• https://code.earthengine.google.com/?accept_repo=users/nclinton/EE201
• Earth Engine best practices, client-server interaction, gotchas
• https://code.earthengine.google.com/?accept_repo=users/nclinton/EE202
• UI stuff for beginners
• https://code.earthengine.google.com/?accept_repo=users/nclinton/ui-api-101
• NDVI inspector
• https://code.earthengine.google.com/8bae27d7011e93b84db2013155f3bb23
Other Resources

• API Guide: https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/guides

• Community Guide: https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/tutorials

• GEE Blogs: https://medium.com/google-earth/tagged/earth-engine

• https://gee-community.github.io/qgis-earthengine-plugin

• GEE Map: https://geemap.org