Drum roll please!!! Tidings, GIS specialists!
I opened YouTube tonight and guess what I saw? There’s a new plugin for integrating Google Earth Engine with QGIS.
Please note that this is Google Earth Engine and not ordinary Google Earth.
Google Earth Engine is a cloud platform that allows you analyse satellite data on a petabyte scale. Google acquired loads of raster data and made them freely available for researchers on their Engine platform.
To use the Earth Engine platform, you’ll need to submit a request to Google just as people apply for AdSense.
Also, you need to know that the platform as a Graphical User Interface (GUI) but the GUI is highly limited. If you want to explore the platform to its fullest then you’ll need to code!
The platform supports two programming languages; JavaScript and Python. The JavaScript library is more robust.
On the other hand, QGIS is a free and open-source but highly powerful GIS software. It has a Python API called PYQGIS for automating tasks.
The program also has many plugins and algorithms for extending it’s functionality. The most notable of them include the; semi-automatic classification (SCP) plugin, GRASS library, SAGA library, Orfeo ToolBox (OTB) library and many more.
The Google Earth Engine plugin is the latest addition to the QGIS library.
To learn more:
Visit this link: https://gee-community.github.io/qgis-earthengine-plugin/
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