Introduction to

Google Earth Engine

Warren Scott
February 24, 2021
 United States Department of Agriculture

Housekeeping
• Instructor: Warren Scott
• Contractor, USDA Forest Service, Geospatial
Technology and Applications Center (GTAC)
• Microsoft Teams Meeting
• Please remember to mute yourselves until the
presentation is complete

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Agenda for Today:

• 10:00 – 11:15: Earth Engine Overview

• 11:15 – 11:45: Demo of the Code Editor

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Earth Engine Overview

• What is Google Earth Engine?

• Example Applications

• Two Platforms:

• Code Editor

• Explorer

• Demo
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What is Earth Engine?

1. A cloud-based geospatial processing

platform for executing large-scale

environmental data analysis.
2. Remote Sensing Archive: Photo courtesy of Google Earth Outreach

• Petabytes of data in one

location

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What it’s not …

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Why is it such a powerful

image analysis software?
1. Public data catalog: vast amounts of publicly available
data (you don’t need to store data)
2. Processing power (computation engine):
1. Distributed computation power
2. Cloud processing (Google’s computer clusters)
3. Comprehensive toolset to analyze data: scientific algorithms
ready for use & the building blocks to create your own
3. Interactive development platforms:
1. Explorer
2. Code Editor
4. Save and share work routines

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1. Earth Engine Public Data Catalog

• Imagery
• Geophysical
• Climate & Weather
• Demographic
• Vector Data

Image: Dave Thau

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2. Computation Engine
“The computation engine is a just in time
distributed computation model, a cloud-based
processing infrastructure that automatically
parallelizes analyses on many CPUs across many
computers in Google’s data centers.”
Storage Clusters (petabytes of data)
Computing clusters (1,000’s of CPUs

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2. Computation Engine
Storage Clusters (petabytes of data)
Computing clusters (1,000’s of CPUs

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2. Computation Engine
• Unprecedented speed: reduce processing
times by orders of magnitude by using the
distributed, cloud-based computing power
• Ease of use and lower costs: online
platform with easy access to data, scientific
algorithms, computational power.

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Example Application
Resource Need:
• Map all change between 2000 – 2010 over
a specific forest
• Extent of change
• Year of occurrence

• How would you accomplish this task?

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Traditional Method
• Select Area of Interest
• Find WRS path/row(s) – assume an area
of 4 scenes Analysis:
Data Prep: • Build spatial model in ERDAS to compare
• Download and store all Landsat during year pairs
growing season (1 GB / zipped scene) • Generate change layer
• Extract and layer stack all Landsat (1.75 • Classify pixels > certain value as “change”
GB / scene) • Build spatial model to apply year attribute
• ~48 scenes per year * 11 years = ~528 scenes, or 924 GB
to each pixel
• Apply atmospheric correction (924 more
• Repeat for each year pair
GB)
• Build spatial model to stack all attributed
• Normalize scenes
change layers into a single raster image,
• Apply FMASK or similar to remove clouds with the most recently changed pixel on
and shadows top
• Create composite and mosaic by year • Apply color ramp visually demonstrating
• Generate vegetation index per year (NDVI change
and/or NBR)

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In Earth Engine It took an

experienced
geospatial
programmer ~1 hour
and 100 lines of code
to get the same
result

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Example Application
• Classifying land cover conditions and change
detection:
• Video of deforestation in Brazil
https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/?location=rondonia

• Global Forest Change Map,

Hansen et al
http://earthenginepartners.appspot.com/science-2013-global-forest

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Earth Engine Costs

• It’s free

An excerpt from their website:

“Why is Google working on Earth Engine?
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and
make it universally accessible and useful. In line with this
mission, Earth Engine organizes geospatial information and
makes it available for analysis. More generally, Google
strives to make the world a better place through the use of
technology. Earth Engine’s technical infrastructure powers
humanitarian, scientific, and environmental initiatives which
Google is proud to support.”

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When to use Earth Engine

EE Benefits: EE Limitations:
Good for projects that • Better suited to image
requires: analyses than vector-based
• Data coverage for a large analyses
region • Analysis based on pixel
• Extensive data library spatial relations are harder to
• High speed, intensive
complete (because of the
processing on multiple
processing capacity CPU’s). Image segmentation
• Advanced raster processing and hydrologic modeling
tools options are limited

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How GTAC uses Earth Engine

• Streamline & Share GIS/RS workflows

• Develop novel methods and algorithms

• Bridge gap between literature &

application
• Create applications to deliver data &
analysis capabilities to non Earth
Engine users

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Examples: GTAC use of Earth Engine

• Robust cloud-shadow masking
• Who: USFS Northern Research Station for EPA Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI)
• Target: Robust cloud shadow removal
• Where: Great Lakes Basins - now being utilized in nearly all EE-based projects
• When: 1984-2014

• Automated retrospective annual forest

disturbance detection
• Who: USFS Forest Health Technology Enterprise Team (FHTET) Operational Remote Sensing
• Target: Both perennial and ephemeral forest disturbance events
• Where: Continental US
• When: Currently a pilot project intended to be implemented annually

• Automated deforestation and degradation

detection
• Who: Lowering Emissions in Asian Forests (LEAF) / UN REDD+
• Target: Perennial forest disturbance events with effects that persist > 2 years
• Where: Madang, Papua New Guinea; Houaphan, Laos; Measa Kongma, Thailand; Lamdong, Vietnam
• When: 2000-2014

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Where We Use Earth Engine

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USFS EE Use Considerations

1. Google Earth Engine is a free platform that anybody
can set up an account with. If you plan on using it for
operational purposes, please email
[email protected] and/or [email protected]
2. Google offers 256 gigabytes of extra storage space per
user, plus 10 terabytes of shared storage space in
addition to the data catalogs already considerable size.
3. Make sure you consider the sensitivity and privacy of
any data you upload. Sensitive data (e.g. FIA plots)
should be kept within the USFS, and not exposed to
GEE.

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3. Two Platforms
• Graphical User Interface (Explorer)
• https://explorer.earthengine.google.com/#workspace
• User friendly way to begin exploring and analyzing data

• Application Program Interface (Code Editor)

• https://code.earthengine.google.com/
• Powerful geospatial tool to create complex custom analysis
• Requires some programming knowledge
• Supports both JavaScript and Python*

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Explorer Platform
• A point and click platform:
• Audience: non-programmers
• Basic analysis functionality
• Per pixel math (~ESRI’s
raster calculator),
• Neighborhood algorithms,
• Terrain algorithms, etc
• Save and share workspace
• Explore and export data

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Explorer Platform
Cons:
• Limited analysis power:
• subset of tools
• Some collections cannot
be accessed

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Code Editor
• What is it?
• Web based IDE for the Earth Engine API
• Access many pre-made geospatial tools
• JavaScript
• Python

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Code Editor Interface

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Registration Process
• Sign up for an Evaluator account:
• Register here:
https://earthengine.google.com/signup/
• It may take up to one week to be granted access

• If you don’t have access to the developers

forum, sign up here:

• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/google-

earth-engine-developers
.
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Some Code Editor Benefits

• Allows user to create extremely complex

workflows (batch tasks) using

• any data in Earth Engine, and
• its extremely high speed computation engine

• Workflows can be shared easily between

users

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Some Code Editor Cons

• Requires programming knowledge

• Need to be aware of unique GEE classes

and methods

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Common Classes
• Images
• Image Collections
• Feature Collections
• Geometries

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Demonstration
• https://code.earthengine.google.com/46bf1
bebe7f905c4cf840ecb457d3ad3
• https://explorer.earthengine.google.com/#w
orkspace

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Questions?

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