Summary

Earth Map (earthmap.org) is a web-based FAO-Google tool for quick multi-temporal analysis of environment and climate parameters for evidence-based policies integrating cloud technologies and freely available datasets. Earth Map can analyse and display data that are already present in Google Earth Engine (earthengine.google.com) as other freely available datasets that have been gathered, processed and uploaded to the platform.

Data domains range from temperature to precipitation, fires, population, vegetation, evapotranspiration, water, land use/cover, elevation, soil, satellite images, etc. Most of the data include multi-temporal series allowing to have a time machine for several environmental parameters.

Earth Map aims to lower the access to some feature of Earth Engine through a simple graphical interface with drop-down menus. Any user can run environmental and climatic analysis on their area of interest and in a matter of few seconds.

https://data.apps.fao.org/catalog/dataset/a7116f30-254f-43c3-85ce-6756b4dd5259/resource/2d9c30c0-b593-4879-9096-1b3e87cc248a/download/earth-map-screenshot.png" alt="EarthMap Screenshot">

Application

Users without prior experience in GIS or remote sensing, but with knowledge of the land to be analysed, can use Earth Map to produce images, tables and statistics describing the environmental and climatic context and history of an area. Therefore, Earth Map can play a strategic role in providing guidance in project design but also in project monitoring and final evaluation.

Even in countries where data appear to be scarce, the remote-sensing data in Earth Engine are integrated with additional freely available datasets to provide timely analysis, customized for the objectives of the projects. The tool allows to gather an in-depth multi-temporal perspective of the environmental and climatic conditions with a focus on the study of the anomalies and their frequency.

Background

Earth Map has been developed in the framework of the FAO-Google partnership, in synergy with the FAO Hand-in-Hand Geospatial Platform and thanks to the support of the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU). The team behind Earth Map is the same team that developed Collect Earth (www.openforis.org/tools/collect-earth.html) and it is still maintaining it; Collect Earth is another FAO-Google application to produce detailed statistics of land use, land use change and forest through a point sampling approach and freely available remote sensing data.

What is SEPAL?

SEPAL (https://sepal.io/) is a free and open source cloud computing platform for geo-spatial data access and processing. It empowers users to quickly process large amounts of data on their computer or mobile device. Users can create custom analysis ready data using freely available satellite imagery, generate and improve land use maps, analyze time series, run change detection and perform accuracy assessment and area estimation, among many other functionalities in the platform. Data can be created and analyzed for any place on Earth using SEPAL.

https://data.apps.fao.org/catalog/dataset/9c4d7c45-7620-44c4-b653-fbe13eb34b65/resource/63a3efa0-08ab-4ad6-9d4a-96af7b6a99ec/download/cambodia_mosaic_2020.png" alt="alt text" title="Figure 1: Best pixel mosaic of Landsat 8 data for 2020 over Cambodia">

Figure 1: Best pixel mosaic of Landsat 8 data for 2020 over Cambodia

SEPAL reaches over 5000 users in 180 countries for the creation of custom data products from freely available satellite data. SEPAL was developed as a part of the Open Foris suite, a set of free and open source software platforms and tools that facilitate flexible and efficient data collection, analysis and reporting. SEPAL combines and integrates modern geospatial data infrastructures and supercomputing power available through Google Earth Engine and Amazon Web Services with powerful open-source data processing software, such as R, ORFEO, GDAL, Python and Jupiter Notebooks. Users can easily access the archive of satellite imagery from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) as well as high spatial and temporal resolution data from Planet Labs and turn such images into data that can be used for reporting and better decision making.

National Forest Monitoring Systems in many countries have been strengthened by SEPAL, which provides technical government staff with computing resources and cutting edge technology to accurately map and monitor their forests. The platform was originally developed for monitoring forest carbon stock and stock changes for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). The application of the tools on the platform now reach far beyond forest monitoring by providing different stakeholders access to cloud based image processing tools, remote sensing and machine learning for any application. Presently, users work on SEPAL for various applications related to land monitoring, land cover/use, land productivity, ecological zoning, ecosystem restoration monitoring, forest monitoring, near real time alerts for forest disturbances and fire, flood mapping, mapping impact of disasters, peatland rewetting status, and many others.

The Hand-in-Hand initiative enables countries that generate data through SEPAL to disseminate their data widely through the platform and to combine their data with the numerous other datasets available through Hand-in-Hand.

https://data.apps.fao.org/catalog/dataset/9c4d7c45-7620-44c4-b653-fbe13eb34b65/resource/868e59da-47b9-4736-93a9-f8d83f5731aa/download/probability_classification_over_zambia.png" alt="alt text" title="Figure 2: Image classification module for land monitoring and mapping. Probability classification over Zambia">

Figure 2: Image classification module for land monitoring and mapping. Probability classification over Zambia

MSZSI: Multi-Scale Zonal Statistics [AgriClimate] Inventory

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MSZSI is a data extraction tool for Google Earth Engine that aggregates time-series remote sensing information to multiple administrative levels using the FAO GAUL data layers. The code at the bottom of this page (metadata) can be pasted into the Google Earth Engine JavaScript code editor and ran at https://code.earthengine.google.com/.

Please refer to the associated publication:
Peter, B.G., Messina, J.P., Breeze, V., Fung, C.Y., Kapoor, A. and Fan, P., 2024. Perspectives on modifiable spatiotemporal unit problems in remote sensing of agriculture: evaluating rice production in Vietnam and tools for analysis. Frontiers in Remote Sensing, 5, p.1042624.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/remote-sensing/articles/10.3389/frsen.2024.1042624

Input options:
[1] Country of interest
[2] Start and end year
[3] Start and end month
[4] Option to mask data to a specific land-use/land-cover type
[5] Land-use/land-cover type code from CGLS LULC
[6] Image collection for data aggregation
[7] Desired band from the image collection
[8] Statistics type for the zonal aggregations
[9] Statistic to use for annual aggregation
[10] Scaling options
[11] Export folder and label suffix

Output: Two CSVs containing zonal statistics for each of the FAO GAUL administrative level boundaries
Output fields: system:index, 0-ADM0_CODE, 0-ADM0_NAME, 0-ADM1_CODE, 0-ADM1_NAME, 0-ADMN_CODE, 0-ADMN_NAME, 1-AREA_PERCENT_LULC, 1-AREA_SQM_LULC, 1-AREA_SQM_ZONE, 2-X_2001, 2-X_2002, 2-X_2003, ..., 2-X_2020, .geo



PREPROCESSED DATA DOWNLOAD

The datasets available for download contain zonal statistics at 2 administrative levels (FAO GAUL levels 1 and 2). Select countries from Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Burundi, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe) are included in the current version, with plans to extend the dataset to contain global metrics. Each zip file is described below and two example NDVI tables are available for preview.

Key: [source, data, units, temporal range, aggregation, masking, zonal statistic, notes]

Currently available:
MSZSI-V2_V-NDVI-MEAN.tar: [NASA-MODIS, NDVI, index, 2001–2020, annual mean, agriculture, mean, n/a]
MSZSI-V2_T-LST-DAY-MEAN.tar: [NASA-MODIS, LST Day, °C, 2001–2020, annual mean, agriculture, mean, n/a]
MSZSI-V2_T-LST-NIGHT-MEAN.tar: [NASA-MODIS, LST Night, °C, 2001–2020, annual mean, agriculture, mean, n/a]
MSZSI-V2_R-PRECIP-SUM.tar: [UCSB-CHG-CHIRPS, Precipitation, mm, 2001–2020, annual sum, agriculture, mean, n/a]
MSZSI-V2_S-BDENS-MEAN.tar: [OpenLandMap, Bulk density, g/cm3, static, n/a, agriculture, mean, at depths 0-10-30-60-100-200]
MSZSI-V2_S-ORGC-MEAN.tar: [OpenLandMap, Organic carbon, g/kg, static, n/a, agriculture, mean, at depths 0-10-30-60-100-200]
MSZSI-V2_S-PH-MEAN.tar: [OpenLandMap, pH in H2O, pH, static, n/a, agriculture, mean, at depths 0-10-30-60-100-200]
MSZSI-V2_S-WATER-MEAN.tar: [OpenLandMap, Soil water, % at 33kPa, static, n/a, agriculture, mean, at depths 0-10-30-60-100-200]
MSZSI-V2_S-SAND-MEAN.tar: [OpenLandMap, Sand, %, static, n/a, agriculture, mean, at depths 0-10-30-60-100-200]
MSZSI-V2_S-SILT-MEAN.tar: [OpenLandMap, Silt, %, static, n/a, agriculture, mean, at depths 0-10-30-60-100-200]
MSZSI-V2_S-CLAY-MEAN.tar: [OpenLandMap, Clay, %, static, n/a, agriculture, mean, at depths 0-10-30-60-100-200]
MSZSI-V2_E-ELEV-MEAN.tar: [MERIT, [elevation, slope, flowacc, HAND], [m, degrees, km², m], static, n/a, agriculture, mean, n/a]

Coming soon
MSZSI-V2_C-STAX-MEAN.tar: [OpenLandMap, Soil taxonomy, category, static, n/a, agriculture, area sum, n/a]
MSZSI-V2_C-LULC-MEAN.tar: [CGLS-LC100-V3, LULC, category, 2015–2019, mode, none, area sum, n/a]




Data sources: