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Tropical Forest Observatory in GEE

Planet and Google offer a native integration to Google Earth Engine for users of the Tropical Forest Observatory. Planet Tropical Basemaps are hosted in Google Earth Engine (GEE) and you can access them in the same way as any other GEE dataset.

note

Previously, Tropical Basemaps were available through the NICFI program. These are now available only to previous NICFI users as a paid upgrade to the Tropical Forest Observatory: purchase access here.

Access Tropical Basemaps in Google Earth Engine​

To access the Tropical Basemaps in GEE:

  1. When you have created and logged in to an account with access to Tropical Basemaps, you can access Basemaps in GEE by navigating to Account Settings.

  2. In the Access TFO Data in Google Earth Engine section, click Add to Earth Engine.

  3. In the EE Image Collection dialog, enter the email associated with your GEE account.

  4. Select the Account icon from the Planet Imagery ribbon to log in, then authenticate using your Planet username and password

note

The email associated with your GEE account might differ from the email used for your Planet account. Each user is only permitted to register one email to the TFO program. If you edit your account (email, collections, and so on) GEE access might be revoked from the previously registered email.

Usage Rights​

Access to the Tropical Basemaps Image Collections requires a purchase, so the collections do not appear when searching the public catalog.

You are permitted to share data in compliance with the Tropical Forest Observatory terms.

Available Tropical Basemaps​

The following Basemaps are available in GEE:

  • PlanetScope Tropical Normalized Analytic
  • Biannual PlanetScope
  • Tropical Normalized Analytic Monthly Basemaps

The Tropical Basemaps are organized by the major rainforest regions (Amazon, Congo, and Indonesia) into 3 regional Image Collections. Biannual and monthly basemaps are included within the same regional image collection.

You can add a mosaic from the collection to your map by using the following command.

Add Tropical Basemaps to GEE
var imageCollection = ee.ImageCollection(
  'projects/planet-nicfi/assets/basemaps/africa',
);

Map.addLayer(imageCollection.first(), { gain: 0.15, bands: ['R', 'G', 'B'] });

TFO monthly and biannual Basemaps are generally made available in Google Earth Engine within one week of publication.

Working with Series​

The PlanetScope Tropical Normalized Analytic Monthly series Basemaps are stored as images in the Image Collections representing a single month in time. For example, the July 2021 Normalized Analytic Basemap has a start date of 2021-07-01 and an end date on the first of the following month: 2021-08-01. Running a date filter for a specific time period within this month, will not return any results (for example, between 2021-08-02 and 2021-08-19).

note

The filterDate options use the start date and verify if it is within the date range provided. The start of the month must be included in your query.

For example, the following filter returns only the Basemap for October:

var filter_collection = planet_collection.filterDate(
  '2020-09-02',
  '2020-10-02',
);

To return both September and October, use the following filter:

var filter_collection = planet_collection.filterDate(
  '2020-09-01',
  '2020-10-02',
);

Accessing Source Scenes​

The source scenes that make up a basemaps can also be delivered to Google Earth Engine through our delivery integration. This requires download quota to use.

You can also identify which source scenes from a specified point location with the following tools:

Visit Google Earth Engine to get started with Tropical Basemaps →

More Resources​

📖

Tropical Forest Observatory User Guide

Explore the user guide.

📖

Tropical Forest Observatory Learning Resources

Find more resources at Planet University.