Get Started with Earth Engine

  • Google Earth Engine allows users to run algorithms on georeferenced imagery and vectors stored on Google's infrastructure using the Earth Engine API.

  • The Earth Engine documentation is primarily structured by data type and is designed for people familiar with geospatial data analysis.

  • The Code Editor is an interactive environment for developing Earth Engine applications where you can write and run JavaScript code, visualize data on a map, and manage assets.

  • The two most fundamental geographic data structures in Earth Engine are Image (raster) and Feature (vector), which can be organized into ImageCollection and FeatureCollection respectively.

  • You can find images, image collections, and feature collections by searching the Earth Engine Data Catalog or by copying and pasting collection IDs into your code.

  • Operations in the API can be performed by calling methods attached to objects, calling algorithms, calling Code Editor specific functions, or defining new functions.

  • Printing information to the console using print() and adding data to the map using Map.addLayer() are fundamental ways to inspect and visualize data.

  • Filtering collections by space and/or time using methods like filterBounds() and filterDate() or using ee.Filter is essential for managing large datasets.

  • Use map() to iterate over items in a collection to modify every element in the same way, avoiding traditional for loops.

  • Reducing is used to aggregate data over various structures, such as creating composites of ImageCollections with reduce() or computing statistics within regions with reduceRegion().

  • Masking is used to make pixels transparent or exclude them from analysis by setting their mask value to zero.

This Get Started guide is intended as a quick way to start programming with the Earth Engine JavaScript API. For an introductory look at JavaScript and more in-depth exercises with the Earth Engine API, see the tutorials. For recommended JavaScript coding style, see the Google JavaScript Style Guide.

Google Earth Engine allows users to run algorithms on georeferenced imagery and vectors stored on Google's infrastructure. The Google Earth Engine API provides a library of functions which may be applied to data for display and analysis. Earth Engine's public data catalog contains a large amount of publicly available imagery and vector datasets. Private assets can also be created in users' personal folders.

How to use these docs

The Earth Engine documentation is designed for people familiar with geospatial data analysis. The docs are primarily structured by data type. For example, the left side navigation contains links to sections or pages about important data types such as Image, ImageCollection, Feature, FeatureCollection, Geometry, Reducer, Chart, Join and Array. This guide describes only enough about these types to get you started. There are also sections for machine learning, specialized or sensor specific algorithms (e.g. Landsat algorithms), public facing apps, data (asset) management and important details about Earth Engine internal workings. Before diving in to any of that, start here!

The Code Editor

The Code Editor is an interactive environment for developing Earth Engine applications (Figure 1). The center panel provides a JavaScript code editor. Above the editor are buttons to save the current script, run it, and clear the map. The Get Link button generates a unique URL for the script in the address bar. The map in the bottom panel contains the layers added by the script. At the top is a search box for datasets and places. The left panel contains code examples, your saved scripts, a searchable API reference and an asset manager for private data. The right panel has an inspector for querying the map, an output console, and a manager for long-running tasks. The help button in the upper right contains links to this Guide and other resources for getting help. Learn more from the Code Editor guide and the Get Help guide.