scholarly journals Automated detection of individual juniper tree location and forest cover changes using Google Earth Engine

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-72
Author(s):  
Sudeera Wickramarathna ◽  
Jamon Van Den Hoek ◽  
Bogdan Strimbu
Keyword(s):  
Random Forest ◽  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Near Infrared ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Random Forest Algorithm ◽  
Individual Tree ◽  
Western Juniper ◽  
Effective Manner ◽  
Google Earth Engine

Tree detection is the first step in the appraisal of a forest, especially when the focus is monitoring the growth of tree canopy. The acquisition of annual very high-resolution aerial images by the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) and their accessibility through Google Earth Engine (GEE) supports the delineation of tree canopies and change over time in a cost and time-effective manner. The objectives of this study are to develop an automated method to detect the crowns of individual western Juniper (Juniperus occidentalis) trees and to assess the change of forest cover from multispectral 1-meter resolution NAIP images collected from 2009 to 2016 in Oregon, USA. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), and Ratio Vegetation Index (RVI) were calculated from the NAIP images, in addition to the red-green-blue-near infrared bands. To identify the most suitable approach for individual tree crown identification, we created two training datasets: one considering yearly images separately and one merging all images, irrespective of the year. We segmented individual tree crowns using a random forest algorithm implemented in GEE and seven rasters, namely the reflectance of four spectral bands as recorded by the NAIP images (i.e., the red-green-blue-near infrared) and three calculated indices (i.e., NDVI, NDWI, and RVI). We compared the estimated location of the trees, computed as the centroid of the crown, with the visually identified treetops, which were considered as validation locations. We found that tree location errors were smaller when years were analyzed individually than by merging the years. Measurements of completeness (74%), correctness (94%), and mean accuracy detection (82 %) show promising performance of the random forest algorithm in crown delineation, considering that only four original input bands were used for crown segmentation. The change in the calculated crown area for western juniper follows a sinusoidal curve, with a decrease from 2011 to 2012 and an increase from 2012 to 2014. The proposed approach has the potential to estimate individual tree locations and forest cover area dynamics at broad spatial scales using regularly collected airborne imagery with easy-to-implement methods.

scholarly journals CHINA FOREST COVER EXTRACTION BASED ON GOOGLE EARTH ENGINE

2020 ◽  
Vol XLII-3/W10 ◽  
pp. 855-862 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. T. Guo ◽  
X. M. Zhang ◽  
T. F. Long ◽  
W. L. Jiao ◽  
G. J. He ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Random Forest ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Survey Methods ◽  
Coniferous Forest ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Forest Area ◽  
Landsat 8 ◽  
Forest Change ◽  
Google Earth Engine

Abstract. Forest cover rate is the principal indice to reflect the forest acount of a nation and region. In view of the difficulty of accurately calculating large-scale forest area by traditional statistical survey methods, it is proposed to extract China forest area based on Google Earth Engine platform. Trained by the enough samples selected through the Google Earth software, there are nine different random forest classifiers applicable to their corresponding zones. Using Landsat 8 surface reflectance data of 2018 year and the modified forest partition map, China forest cover is generated on the Google Earth Engine platform. The accuracy of China's forest coverage achieves 89.08%, while the accuracy of Global Forest Change datasets of Maryland university and Japan’s ALOS Forest/Non-Forest forest product reach 87.78% and 84.57%. Besides, the precision of tropical/subtropical forest, temperate coniferous forest as well as nonforest region are 83.25%, 87.94% and 97.83%, higher than those of other’s accuracy. Our results show that by means of the random forest algorithm and enough samples, tropical and subtropical broadleaf forest, temperate coniferous forest and nonforest partition can be extracted more accurately. Through the computation of forest cover, our result shows that China has a area of 220.42 million hectare in 2018.

scholarly journals Detectability of the Critically Endangered Araucaria angustifolia Tree Using Worldview-2 Images, Google Earth Engine and UAV-LiDAR

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1316
Author(s):  
Felipe Saad ◽  
Sumalika Biswas ◽  
Qiongyu Huang ◽  
Ana Paula Dalla Corte ◽  
Márcio Coraiola ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic Forest ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Object Identification ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Critically Endangered ◽  
Araucaria Angustifolia ◽  
Plant Resources ◽  
Individual Tree ◽  
Google Earth Engine ◽  
Study Sites

The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is a global biodiversity hotspot and has been extensively mapped using satellite remote sensing. However, past mapping focused on overall forest cover without consideration of keystone plant resources such as Araucaria angustifolia. A. angustifolia is a critically endangered coniferous tree that is essential for supporting overall biodiversity in the Atlantic Forest. A. angustifolia’s distribution has declined dramatically because of overexploitation and land-use changes. Accurate detection and rapid assessments of the distribution and abundance of this species are urgently needed. We compared two approaches for mapping Araucaria angustifolia across two scales (stand vs. individual tree) at three study sites in Brazil. The first approach used Worldview-2 images and Random Forest in Google Earth Engine to detect A. angustifolia at the stand level, with an accuracy of >90% across all three study sites. The second approach relied on object identification using UAV-LiDAR and successfully mapped individual trees (producer’s/user’s accuracy = 94%/64%) at one study site. Both approaches can be employed in tandem to map remaining stands and to determine the exact location of A. angustifolia trees. Each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses, and we discuss their adoptability by managers to inform conservation of A. angustifolia.

Mapping plant functional types in Northwest Himalayan foothills of India using random forest algorithm in Google Earth Engine

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (18) ◽  
pp. 7296-7309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ritika Srinet ◽  
Subrata Nandy ◽  
Hitendra Padalia ◽  
Surajit Ghosh ◽  
Taibanganba Watham ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Random Forest ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Plant Functional Types ◽  
Random Forest Algorithm ◽  
Functional Types ◽  
Himalayan Foothills ◽  
Google Earth Engine

scholarly journals Application of the Random Forest Classifier to Map Irrigated Areas Using Google Earth Engine

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 876
Author(s):  
James Magidi ◽  
Luxon Nhamo ◽  
Sylvester Mpandeli ◽  
Tafadzwanashe Mabhaudhi
Keyword(s):  
Random Forest ◽  
Land Use Planning ◽  
Classification Accuracy ◽  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Learning Algorithm ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Management Platform ◽  
Normalised Difference Vegetation Index ◽  
Google Earth Engine ◽  
The Impact

Improvements in irrigated areas’ classification accuracy are critical to enhance agricultural water management and inform policy and decision-making on irrigation expansion and land use planning. This is particularly relevant in water-scarce regions where there are plans to increase the land under irrigation to enhance food security, yet the actual spatial extent of current irrigation areas is unknown. This study applied a non-parametric machine learning algorithm, the random forest, to process and classify irrigated areas using images acquired by the Landsat and Sentinel satellites, for Mpumalanga Province in Africa. The classification process was automated on a big-data management platform, the Google Earth Engine (GEE), and the R-programming was used for post-processing. The normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) was subsequently used to distinguish between irrigated and rainfed areas during 2018/19 and 2019/20 winter growing seasons. High NDVI values on cultivated land during the dry season are an indication of irrigation. The classification of cultivated areas was for 2020, but 2019 irrigated areas were also classified to assess the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on agriculture. The comparison in irrigated areas between 2019 and 2020 facilitated an assessment of changes in irrigated areas in smallholder farming areas. The approach enhanced the classification accuracy of irrigated areas using ground-based training samples and very high-resolution images (VHRI) and fusion with existing datasets and the use of expert and local knowledge of the study area. The overall classification accuracy was 88%.

scholarly journals Exploratory Analysis of Driving Force of Wildfires in Australia: An Application of Machine Learning within Google Earth Engine

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Andrea Sulova ◽  
Jamal Jokar Arsanjani
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Machine Learning ◽  
Random Forest ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Summer Season ◽  
Driving Factors ◽  
Machine Learning Algorithms ◽  
Classification And Regression Tree ◽  
Training Dataset ◽  
Google Earth Engine

Recent studies have suggested that due to climate change, the number of wildfires across the globe have been increasing and continue to grow even more. The recent massive wildfires, which hit Australia during the 2019–2020 summer season, raised questions to what extent the risk of wildfires can be linked to various climate, environmental, topographical, and social factors and how to predict fire occurrences to take preventive measures. Hence, the main objective of this study was to develop an automatized and cloud-based workflow for generating a training dataset of fire events at a continental level using freely available remote sensing data with a reasonable computational expense for injecting into machine learning models. As a result, a data-driven model was set up in Google Earth Engine platform, which is publicly accessible and open for further adjustments. The training dataset was applied to different machine learning algorithms, i.e., Random Forest, Naïve Bayes, and Classification and Regression Tree. The findings show that Random Forest outperformed other algorithms and hence it was used further to explore the driving factors using variable importance analysis. The study indicates the probability of fire occurrences across Australia as well as identifies the potential driving factors of Australian wildfires for the 2019–2020 summer season. The methodical approach and achieved results and drawn conclusions can be of great importance to policymakers, environmentalists, and climate change researchers, among others.

scholarly journals Qualifying Land Use and Land Cover Dynamics and Their Impacts on Ecosystem Service in Central Himalaya Transboundary Landscape Based on Google Earth Engine

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 173
Author(s):  
Changjun Gu ◽  
Yili Zhang ◽  
Linshan Liu ◽  
Lanhui Li ◽  
Shicheng Li ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Ecosystem Service ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Forest Cover Change ◽  
Sacred Landscape ◽  
Lulc Changes ◽  
Google Earth Engine

Land use and land cover (LULC) changes are regarded as one of the key drivers of ecosystem services degradation, especially in mountain regions where they may provide various ecosystem services to local livelihoods and surrounding areas. Additionally, ecosystems and habitats extend across political boundaries, causing more difficulties for ecosystem conservation. LULC in the Kailash Sacred Landscape (KSL) has undergone obvious changes over the past four decades; however, the spatiotemporal changes of the LULC across the whole of the KSL are still unclear, as well as the effects of LULC changes on ecosystem service values (ESVs). Thus, in this study we analyzed LULC changes across the whole of the KSL between 2000 and 2015 using Google Earth Engine (GEE) and quantified their impacts on ESVs. The greatest loss in LULC was found in forest cover, which decreased from 5443.20 km2 in 2000 to 5003.37 km2 in 2015 and which mainly occurred in KSL-Nepal. Meanwhile, the largest growth was observed in grassland (increased by 548.46 km2), followed by cropland (increased by 346.90 km2), both of which mainly occurred in KSL-Nepal. Further analysis showed that the expansions of cropland were the major drivers of the forest cover change in the KSL. Furthermore, the conversion of cropland to shrub land indicated that farmland abandonment existed in the KSL during the study period. The observed forest degradation directly influenced the ESV changes in the KSL. The total ESVs in the KSL decreased from 36.53 × 108 USD y−1 in 2000 to 35.35 × 108 USD y−1 in 2015. Meanwhile, the ESVs of the forestry areas decreased by 1.34 × 108 USD y−1. This shows that the decrease of ESVs in forestry was the primary cause to the loss of total ESVs and also of the high elasticity. Our findings show that even small changes to the LULC, especially in forestry areas, are noteworthy as they could induce a strong ESV response.

ANALISIS TEMPORAL PERUBAHAN HUTAN MANGROVE MENGGUNAKAN CITRA SATELIT SENTINEL-2 (Studi Kasus di Pulau Tanakeke, Kabupaten Takalar)

2021 ◽  
pp. 777
Author(s):  
Andi Tenri Waru ◽  
Athar Abdurrahman Bayanuddin ◽  
Ferman Setia Nugroho ◽  
Nita Rukminasari
Keyword(s):  
Random Forest ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Multi Temporal ◽  
Google Earth Engine ◽  
Sentinel 2

Pulau Tanakeke merupakan salah satu pulau dengan hutan mangrove yang luas di pesisir Sulawesi Selatan. Hutan mangrove ini menjadi ekosistem penting bagi masyarakat sekitar karena nilai ekologi maupun ekonominya. Namun, dalam kurun waktu sekitar tahun 1980-2000, keberadaan mangrove tersebut terancam oleh perubahan penggunaan lahan dan juga pemanfaatan yang berlebihan. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis perubahan temporal luas dan tingkat kerapatan hutan mangrove di Pulau Tanakeke antara tahun 2016 dan 2019. Metode analisis perubahan luasan hutan mangrove menggunakan data citra satelit Sentinel-2 multi temporal berdasarkan hasil klasifikasi hutan mangrove dengan menggunakan random forest pada platform Google Earth Engine. Akurasi keseluruhan hasil klasifikasi hutan mangrove tahun 2016 dan 2019 sebesar 91% dan 98%. Berdasarkan hasil analisis spasial diperoleh perubahan penurunan luasan mangrove yang signifikan dari 800,21 ha menjadi 640,15 ha. Kerapatan mangrove di Pulau Tanakeke sebagian besar tergolong kategori dalam kerapatan tinggi.

PENERAPAN MACHINE LEARNING BERBASIS DATA GEOSPASIAL UNTUK OPTIMALISASI LAHAN PERTANIAN PADA MASA PANDEMI DAN PASCA PANDEMI

2021 ◽  
pp. 161
Author(s):  
Royyannuur Kurniawan Endrayanto ◽  
Adharul Muttaqin
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Random Forest ◽  
Early Warning Systems ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Warning Systems ◽  
Land Data Assimilation ◽  
Google Earth Engine ◽  
Land Data Assimilation System ◽  
Data Assimilation System ◽  
Assimilation System

Pertanian merupakan salah satu sektor penting karena dapat memenuhi kebutuhan pangan sebagai kebutuhan pokok. Kebutuhan pangan masih menjadi salah satu isu hangat terlebih di masa pandemi COVID- 19 seperti saat ini. Pemenuhan kebutuhan pangan juga berkaitan erat dengan jumlah bahan pangan yang diproduksi oleh petani. Lingkungan merupakan salah satu faktor keberhasilan dalam kegiatan pertanian. Kondisi lingkungan Indonesia yang beragam seperti suhu dan tingkat presipitasi menyebabkan adanya perbedaan jenis tanaman pangan potensial setiap daerah di Indonesia. Oleh karena itu perlu upaya untuk mengoptimalkan produksi lahan pertanian berdasarkan faktor lingkungan di setiap daerah. Upaya ini diharapkan dapat membantu menjaga ketahanan pangan baik di masa pandemi dan pasca pandemi. Pada penelitian ini diperkenalkan pemanfaatan data geospasial untuk klasifikasi jenis tanaman pangan menggunakan algoritma machine learning sebagai upaya optimalisasi lahan pertanian. Data yang digunakan adalah Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) Land Data Assimilation System (FLDAS). Algoritma machine learning yang digunakan adalah algoritma klasifikasi Random Forest. Teknologi yang digunakan adalah Google Colab, Google Earth Engine dan Python. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengklasifikasikan tanaman pangan yang memiliki potensi paling baik untuk ditanam di suatu daerah berdasarkan kondisi lingkungan yang ada.

scholarly journals Vegetation Types Mapping Using Multi-Temporal Landsat Images in the Google Earth Engine Platform

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 4683
Author(s):  
Masoumeh Aghababaei ◽  
Ataollah Ebrahimi ◽  
Ali Asghar Naghipour ◽  
Esmaeil Asadi ◽  
Jochem Verrelst
Keyword(s):  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Optimal Time ◽  
Quantitative Detection ◽  
Landsat 8 ◽  
Vegetation Types ◽  
Landsat Images ◽  
Multi Temporal ◽  
Google Earth Engine ◽  
Land Covers

Vegetation Types (VTs) are important managerial units, and their identification serves as essential tools for the conservation of land covers. Despite a long history of Earth observation applications to assess and monitor land covers, the quantitative detection of sparse VTs remains problematic, especially in arid and semiarid areas. This research aimed to identify appropriate multi-temporal datasets to improve the accuracy of VTs classification in a heterogeneous landscape in Central Zagros, Iran. To do so, first the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) temporal profile of each VT was identified in the study area for the period of 2018, 2019, and 2020. This data revealed strong seasonal phenological patterns and key periods of VTs separation. It led us to select the optimal time series images to be used in the VTs classification. We then compared single-date and multi-temporal datasets of Landsat 8 images within the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform as the input to the Random Forest classifier for VTs detection. The single-date classification gave a median Overall Kappa (OK) and Overall Accuracy (OA) of 51% and 64%, respectively. Instead, using multi-temporal images led to an overall kappa accuracy of 74% and an overall accuracy of 81%. Thus, the exploitation of multi-temporal datasets favored accurate VTs classification. In addition, the presented results underline that available open access cloud-computing platforms such as the GEE facilitates identifying optimal periods and multitemporal imagery for VTs classification.

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