Collect Earth: Land Use and Land Cover Assessment through Augmented Visual Interpretation
AbstractCollect Earth is a free and open source software for land monitoring developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Built on Google desktop and cloud computing technologies, Collect Earth facilitates access to multiple freely available archives of satellite imagery, including archives with very high spatial resolution imagery (Google Earth, Bing Maps) and those with very high temporal resolution imagery (e.g., Google Earth Engine, Google Earth Engine Code Editor). Collectively, these archives offer free access to an unparalleled amount of information on current and past land dynamics for any location in the world. Collect Earth draws upon these archives and the synergies of imagery of multiple resolutions to enable an innovative method for land monitoring that we present here: augmented visual interpretation. In this study, we provide a full overview of Collect Earth’s structure and functionality, and we present the methodology used to undertake land monitoring through augmented visual interpretation. To illustrate the application of the tool and its customization potential, an example of land monitoring in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is presented. The PNG example demonstrates that Collect Earth is a comprehensive and user-friendly tool for land monitoring and that it has the potential to be used to assess land use, land use change, natural disasters, sustainable management of scarce resources and ecosystem functioning. By enabling non-remote sensing experts to assess more than 100 sites per day, we believe that Collect Earth can be used to rapidly and sustainably build capacity for land monitoring and to substantively improve our collective understanding of the world’s land use and land cover. View Full-Text
Externally hosted supplementary file 1
Description: For users who wish to learn more about Collect Earth or use the software for a land assessment, please see the following supplementary materials: 1. Collect Earth User Manual (version 1) (available online: http://openforis.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Collect_Earth_Tutorials/Collect_Earth_User_Manual_20150618_highres_full.pdf) 2. Collect Earth installation file for Windows operating systems (available online: http://www.openforis.org/tools/collect-earth.html) 3. Collect Earth installation file for Mac operating systems (available online: http://www.openforis.org/tools/collect-earth.html) 4. Collect Earth - Papua New Guinea customization (CEP) file
Scifeed alert for new publicationsNever miss any articles matching your research from any publisher
- Get alerts for new papers matching your research
- Find out the new papers from selected authors
- Updated daily for 49'000+ journals and 6000+ publishers
- Define your Scifeed now
Bey, A.; Sánchez-Paus Díaz, A.; Maniatis, D.; Marchi, G.; Mollicone, D.; Ricci, S.; Bastin, J.-F.; Moore, R.; Federici, S.; Rezende, M.; Patriarca, C.; Turia, R.; Gamoga, G.; Abe, H.; Kaidong, E.; Miceli, G. Collect Earth: Land Use and Land Cover Assessment through Augmented Visual Interpretation. Remote Sens. 2016, 8, 807.
Bey A, Sánchez-Paus Díaz A, Maniatis D, Marchi G, Mollicone D, Ricci S, Bastin J-F, Moore R, Federici S, Rezende M, Patriarca C, Turia R, Gamoga G, Abe H, Kaidong E, Miceli G. Collect Earth: Land Use and Land Cover Assessment through Augmented Visual Interpretation. Remote Sensing. 2016; 8(10):807.Chicago/Turabian Style
Bey, Adia; Sánchez-Paus Díaz, Alfonso; Maniatis, Danae; Marchi, Giulio; Mollicone, Danilo; Ricci, Stefano; Bastin, Jean-François; Moore, Rebecca; Federici, Sandro; Rezende, Marcelo; Patriarca, Chiara; Turia, Ruth; Gamoga, Gewa; Abe, Hitofumi; Kaidong, Elizabeth; Miceli, Gino. 2016. "Collect Earth: Land Use and Land Cover Assessment through Augmented Visual Interpretation." Remote Sens. 8, no. 10: 807.
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.