Google Earth Engine 101: Introduction to Earth Engine for beginners

Meet Earth Engine

Google Earth Engine is a geospatial processing service. With Earth Engine, you can perform geospatial processing at scale, powered by Google Cloud Platform. The purpose of Earth Engine is to:

• Provide an interactive platform for geospatial algorithm development at scale
• Enable high-impact, data-driven science
• Make substantive progress on global challenges that involve large geospatial datasets

Google Earth Engine combines a multi-petabyte catalog of satellite imagery and geospatial datasets with planetary-scale analysis capabilities and makes it available for scientists, researchers, and developers to detect changes, map trends, and quantify differences on the Earth's surface.

Presenter: Stace Maples

Please note that this workshop is for Stanford University affiliates, only. 

Description: The Earth Engine API (application programming interface) provides the ability to create your own algorithms to process raster and vector imagery. This session is geared toward people who would like to analyze satellite and vector data. The session will be hands-on, using the Earth Engine Javascript code editor.

The first part of the class will be an introduction to Remote Sensing, in general. The second half will focus on introducing the Google Earth Engine Platform, and accessing imagery, creating composites, and running analyses over stacks of images, computing statistics on imagery, creating charts and exporting the results of your analyses.

Prerequisites: No previous experience with Earth Engine or JavaScript is necessary for the beginner workshop, but programming experience, basic knowledge of remote sensing and/or GIS are highly desirable. Willingness to learn programming is required. Participants with no programming experience will require additional attention.

Get Access to Google Earth Engine Immediately!

If you are registering with a @Stanford.edu email address, it is possible that you already have access to Google Earth Engine, through the Stanford Geospatial Center's collaboration with The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. You can test this by going to https://code.earthengine.google.com/f983a2d843739e23ffb77f336ad6d4fb and logging in with your Stanford.edu credentials. The link should load a script that will produce a "Tanaka Hillshade" map of the terrain in the Yosemite Valley.

If you find that you do not currently have access to Google Earth Engine, through your Stanford.edu credentials, please email maples@stanford.edu,to request to be added to the Stanford Geospatial Center's organizational GEE account.

Please note that we are only able to provide access to users with valid Stanford.edu credentials, and a fully sponsored SUNetID.

The Slides

The slides below are the same as those covered in the webinar video. You can open these slides in a separate widow in order to follow along and have access to the linked URLs.

https://slides.com/staceymaples/gee101/embed

The Sample Scripts

Once you have signed up for and received confirmation of your Google Earth Engine account, you can copy the script repository for this webinar by clicking on the following link, which will redirect you to the Google Earth Engine Code Editor and import a series of scripts designed to introduce you to the basic mechanics of working in Google Earth Engine.

https://goo.gl/9f9NgB