Timelapse and Global Forest Watch
You won't need an account or any knowledge of coding to do this session. We will explore user-friendly interfaces that harness the power of Earth Engine to allow you to create custom views of forest cover changes, landuse over time, and many other earth imagery applications.
Three Part Earth Engine Workshop
We'll be working off of this pdf worksheet for all three parts of the workshop.
Other than that, all you'll need is an Earth Engine account. Sign up here if you haven't yet! https://earthengine.google.com/signup/
For best results, please install the Google Chrome web browser, or make sure Chrome is up to date.
Google Earth Engine Part 1: Writing Your First Script
In this session, you will be introduced to the Earth Engine Playground and get familiar with the interface. We will learn basic JavaScript commands, commonly used functions (or tools), and how to work off of the many example scripts provided by the EE team. You’ll be writing your first script in no time! No previous coding or programming experience is needed.
Google Earth Engine Part 2: Importing Satellite Imagery
Now that we’re comfortable in Earth Engine, we will visualize recent satellite imagery (Sentinel-2) along California’s Central Coast, the homelands of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. You will learn how to import satellite imagery, filter it to certain places and dates, and filter out cloudy pixels. In the next session of this workshop, we’ll utilize this imagery to study changes on the Earth’s surface over time. Part 1 of this workshop or a working knowledge of GEE is highly recommended to enjoy this session.
Google Earth Engine Part 3: Detecting Changes on the Landscape
In our final session together, we will calculate and analyze changes in a vegetation index (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, or NDVI) from Sentinel-2 satellite imagery. We’ll compare changes in different vegetation types over time including the seasonal signatures of grasses and forests and the impacts of a recent wildfire within Amah Mutsun homelands. Part 2 of this workshop is necessary for this session.