Google Earth Engine a Game Changer in Satellite Imaging: How Does This Platform Allow Better Monitoring of Deforestation?

Google's Earth Engine has completely changed how experts monitor deforestation worldwide by making the tracking process faster and broader. This vital role of the geospatial processing service stemmed from the curiosity of an engineer about a logging project in California.

How it All Started

Eighteen years ago, a new logging project was announced near the home of Google engineer Rebecca Moore in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Northern California. The developers shared the project's plan with the community, but it was not very informative or transparent. They only provided a 400-page document containing a black-and-white map that can be hardly understood.

Moore used Google Earth to examine the targeted area that spans 1,000 acres. The high-resolution satellite images from the platform reveal information not disclosed in the document. It was found that the project will affect not only the 2,000 people in the community but also the lives of the residents in the Silicon Valley region.

After preparing a flyover video, Moore was able to mobilize the community and ultimately prevented the logging project from happening. Moore now serves as the director of Google Earth, Earth Engine, and Outreach.

Google Earth Engine for Forest Monitoring System

From this successful feat, Moore got the idea of tracking the world's forests using a similar monitoring system. To make this happen, an enormous database is needed to process all the data, giving birth to Google Earth Engine.

In the past, maps and satellite images were stored in institutions like NASA and government agencies. Scientists had to collect and download these data before starting their analysis, which could take weeks and a lot of money. Google responds to this challenge by gathering free-access satellite images from global research organizations and uploading them to its cloud service.

The first target of Google data centers is the world's largest tropical forest - the Amazon rainforest. The nonprofit organization Amazon Institute of People and the Environment built the first operational forest monitoring system on Google Earth Engine (Imazon). The system was integrated into the Deforestation Alert System to report the extent of forest degradation and deforestation in the Amazon every month.

The destruction of the Amazon rainforest does not only affect the nearby communities but the entire planet as a whole. Since it plays a vital role in global climate regulation and biodiversity protection, there is an urgent need to revert the effects of deforestation.

The survey on carbon emissions and land-use changes is generated by a platform called MapBiomas, which monitors deforestation, mining, and infrastructure in Brazil. Producing a map every year is daunting because it requires a huge dataset. Using Google Earth Engine, researchers can work on the project without purchasing a large computational infrastructure.

On a larger scale, the World Resources Institute's Global Forest Watch (GFW) uses this type of monitoring. According to GFW director Mikaela Weisse, Google Earth Engine has enabled them to perform cloud computing and analyze satellite images of real-time deforestation status in various parts of the world.