IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0184926.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mapping land cover change over continental Africa using Landsat and Google Earth Engine cloud computing

Author

Listed:
  • Alemayehu Midekisa
  • Felix Holl
  • David J Savory
  • Ricardo Andrade-Pacheco
  • Peter W Gething
  • Adam Bennett
  • Hugh J W Sturrock

Abstract

Quantifying and monitoring the spatial and temporal dynamics of the global land cover is critical for better understanding many of the Earth’s land surface processes. However, the lack of regularly updated, continental-scale, and high spatial resolution (30 m) land cover data limit our ability to better understand the spatial extent and the temporal dynamics of land surface changes. Despite the free availability of high spatial resolution Landsat satellite data, continental-scale land cover mapping using high resolution Landsat satellite data was not feasible until now due to the need for high-performance computing to store, process, and analyze this large volume of high resolution satellite data. In this study, we present an approach to quantify continental land cover and impervious surface changes over a long period of time (15 years) using high resolution Landsat satellite observations and Google Earth Engine cloud computing platform. The approach applied here to overcome the computational challenges of handling big earth observation data by using cloud computing can help scientists and practitioners who lack high-performance computational resources.

Suggested Citation

  • Alemayehu Midekisa & Felix Holl & David J Savory & Ricardo Andrade-Pacheco & Peter W Gething & Adam Bennett & Hugh J W Sturrock, 2017. "Mapping land cover change over continental Africa using Landsat and Google Earth Engine cloud computing," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(9), pages 1-15, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0184926
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0184926
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184926
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184926&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0184926?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roger A. Pielke & Andy Pitman & Dev Niyogi & Rezaul Mahmood & Clive McAlpine & Faisal Hossain & Kees Klein Goldewijk & Udaysankar Nair & Richard Betts & Souleymane Fall & Markus Reichstein & Pavel Kab, 2011. "Land use/land cover changes and climate: modeling analysis and observational evidence," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 2(6), pages 828-850, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Motuma Shiferaw Regasa & Michael Nones & Dereje Adeba, 2021. "A Review on Land Use and Land Cover Change in Ethiopian Basins," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-18, June.
    2. Wubeshet Damtea & Dongyeob Kim & Sangjun Im, 2020. "Spatiotemporal Analysis of Land Cover Changes in the Chemoga Basin, Ethiopia, Using Landsat and Google Earth Images," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(9), pages 1-14, April.
    3. Daniel Aja & Michael K. Miyittah & Donatus Bapentire Angnuureng, 2022. "Quantifying Mangrove Extent Using a Combination of Optical and Radar Images in a Wetland Complex, Western Region, Ghana," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-17, December.
    4. Miaomiao Ma & Youfeng Zou & Wenzhi Zhang & Chunhui Chen, 2022. "Landscape Pattern Consistency Assessment of 10 m Land Cover Products in Different Ecological Zoning Contexts of Sichuan Province, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-18, December.
    5. Kotapati Narayana Loukika & Venkata Reddy Keesara & Venkataramana Sridhar, 2021. "Analysis of Land Use and Land Cover Using Machine Learning Algorithms on Google Earth Engine for Munneru River Basin, India," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(24), pages 1-15, December.
    6. Ricardo Andrade-Pacheco & David J Savory & Alemayehu Midekisa & Peter W Gething & Hugh J W Sturrock & Adam Bennett, 2019. "Household electricity access in Africa (2000–2013): Closing information gaps with model-based geostatistics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-14, May.
    7. Chasia, Stanley & Olang, Luke O. & Sitoki, Lewis, 2023. "Modelling of land-use/cover change trajectories in a transboundary catchment of the Sio-Malaba-Malakisi Region in East Africa using the CLUE-s model," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 476(C).
    8. Lopes, Catarina & Leite, Ana & Vasconcelos, Maria José, 2019. "Open-access cloud resources contribute to mainstream REDD+: The case of Mozambique," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 48-60.
    9. Zofia Kuzevicova & Diana Bobikova & Stefan Kuzevic & Samer Khouri, 2021. "Changes in the Country and Their Impact on Topographic Data of Agricultural Land—A Case Study of Slovakia," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-22, November.
    10. Wakjira Takala Dibaba & Tamene Adugna Demissie & Konrad Miegel, 2020. "Drivers and Implications of Land Use/Land Cover Dynamics in Finchaa Catchment, Northwestern Ethiopia," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-20, April.
    11. Pankaj Bajracharya & Selima Sultana, 2020. "Rank-size Distribution of Cities and Municipalities in Bangladesh," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-26, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wang, Quan & Wang, Haijun & Chang, Ruihan & Zeng, Haoran & Bai, Xuepiao, 2022. "Dynamic simulation patterns and spatiotemporal analysis of land-use/land-cover changes in the Wuhan metropolitan area, China," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 464(C).
    2. Nayak, Sridhara & Mandal, Manabottam, 2019. "Impact of land use and land cover changes on temperature trends over India," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    3. Chu, Andrea & Lin, Ying-Chen & Chiueh, Pei-Te, 2017. "Incorporating the effect of urbanization in measuring climate adaptive capacity," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 28-38.
    4. Nizamuddin Khan & Mary Raza & Mir Shahid Ahmad Shakoor & Firoj Biswas & Mostafijur Rahaman, 2023. "Dynamic of population growth and its effect on land use/land cover of bahraich district in Uttar Pradesh," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 13(1), pages 124-140, March.
    5. Kurowska, Krystyna & Kryszk, Hubert & Marks-Bielska, Renata & Mika, Monika & Leń, Przemysław, 2020. "Conversion of agricultural and forest land to other purposes in the context of land protection: Evidence from Polish experience," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    6. Pengke Shen & Shuqing Zhao, 2021. "1/4 to 1/3 of observed warming trends in China from 1980 to 2015 are attributed to land use changes," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 1-19, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0184926. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.