Climate Change Adaptation

Lightning Talks

October 2023 | #GeoForGood23

Speakers

1. Kishore Kowtham, Anna University

2. Luiz Felipe Morais Martenexen, Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM)
3. Eric Jensen, Desert Research Institute
4. Annie Taylor, UC Berkeley
5. Matthew Hutchinson and Erin Trochim, Woolpert and University of Alaska Fairbanks
6. Elliot Hohn, The Freshwater Trust
7. Rebecca Willison, Farmer’s Business Network, Inc.
8. Luwen Wan, Michigan State University
9. Tianjia (Tina) Liu, UC Irvine

Geo for Good Summit 2023

#GeoForGood23
Climate Change Adaptation Lightning Talks

Flood Maps -A disaster mitigation and

preparedness need
Kishore Kowtham, Anna University

Geo for Good Summit 2023

The Need of the Hour!!!
●Floods - Most Common type of Natural Disaster
●Floods in cities are more rapid and devastating than in Rural areas
●Huge losses to life,property leading to economic losses
●Floods Mapping is the much need of the hour.
●Flood Maps - The most significant process for
○Effective Mitigation and prepardness for the future
○Assesment of the damages occurred

#GeoForGood23
A simple flow process..

#GeoForGood23
After Flooded Inundated Areas Delhi-July 2023

#GeoForGood23
Flooded Areas Delhi-July 2023

#GeoForGood23
Flood Vizualizer App

#GeoForGood23
Flood Vizualizer App

#GeoForGood23
Flood Analysis Platform

#GeoForGood23
Flood Zonation Mapping
Mitigation Measures

-Direct Mapping of Affected or

Enroached /Modifed Areas on Google
Earth
-Exporting KML into analysis
-Overlaying of Layers for identification of
affected areas
-Areas of vulnerability
-Effective Prepardness

- Severe

- Moderate

#GeoForGood23
Link to the above results in GEE console and colab

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1-FPjCUbq02UTUlOTnAF8XX-bKP671Xb6?usp=sharing

https://code.earthengine.google.com/4f07f3e417379234af73264ec17b97d4?hideCode=true

https://code.earthengine.google.com/1f6cafce90c78bc27cc84b543fe8290e?hideCode=true

https://code.earthengine.google.com/999457ae51fc95c0b5b2f3e65a76f81a?hideCode=true

Thank you!
kishr287@gmail.com

#GeoForGood23
Climate Change Adaptation Lightning Talks

Mapbiomas Fire Monitor: Sentinel Based

Monthly Mapping of Burned Area in Brazil
using Deep Learning Techniques
Luiz Felipe Morais Martenexen, Amazon Environmental
Research Institute (IPAM)

Geo for Good Summit 2023

Overview

All Images
from
Sentinel 2

Burnt pixels of
all Brazilian
territory

Monthly update

Cloud
processing
using AI
algorithms
#GeoForGood23
 Steps used to map burn scars

Potential Classification
Sharing data
burned area model
and statistics

2 4 6

1 3 5

Monthly Training Evaluation

mosaic samples
Min NBR

#GeoForGood23
Creation of Monthly min NBR Mosaic

Normalized Burn Ratio

#GeoForGood23
Identifying Potentially Burned Areas

Mosaic
Export
All
5 km
hotbuffer
spots
to
min
Cloud
NBRStorage

#GeoForGood23
 Training Sample Dataset

27 Regions Burned Non Burned

#GeoForGood23
A.I. Burned Area Classification

Deep Learning Neural Network

#GeoForGood23
 Evaluation

GEE Toolkit Looker Dashboard

#GeoForGood23
Fire Monitoring Platform

https://plataforma.brasil.mapbiomas.org/monitor-do-fogo
#GeoForGood23
Monthly Reports

https://brasil.mapbiomas.org/en/dados-monitor-mensal-do-fogo/
#GeoForGood23
User Toolkit to Download

https://code.earthengine.google.com/c2e6f9da1c9c831f696e005443e29101

#GeoForGood23
Public Asset Available at GEE

ID: projects/mapbiomas-workspace/FOGO/MONITORAMENTO/collection-fire-monthly-sentinel2-v3
#GeoForGood23
Thank You!

Felipe Martenexen

luiz.felipe@ipam.org.br

felipemartenexen

https://brasil.mapbiomas.org/en/

#GeoForGood23
Applications of Climate Engine for analyzing
ecological change and informing resource
management and conservation actions

Eric Jensen
Assistant Research Scientist
Desert Research Institute

Geo for Good Summit 2023 Climate Change Adaptation Lightning Talks
 What is Climate Engine?
Wildfire Drought Extreme Heat Forecasts Vegetation

Built on Google Earth Engine processing and Data Catalog

Freely available no-code and low-code tools for analysis and visualization

Learn more at the Architecture Potluck session or our demo booth

Opportunities for data-driven resource management
Drought Classification Long-term drought blend NDVI Anomaly (Landsat 5/7/8/9 SR)
(US Drought Monitor) (GridMET Drought) 2015-08-01 to 2015-08-25
2015-08-25 2015-08-23 vs. 1991-2020 average

Lovelock, Nevada

D4 D3 D2 D1 D0 None
Exceptional Extreme Severe Moderate Abnormally
Drought Drought Drought Drought Dry
Objectives with BLM
Supported initially by BLM Nevada State Office and
Montana-Dakotas State Office, now by Headquarters and
National Operations Center

Unify disparate satellite-based vegetation

datasets in a common tool.

Develop automated reporting for drought

and vegetation for BLM land units.

Provide training for BLM staff in using drought

and satellite-based vegetation datasets.
 Unifying vegetation datasets
in a common tool

Geo for Good Summit 2023 Climate Change Adaptation Lightning Talks
 Vegetation Datasets in Climate Engine
Surface reflectance and top-of-atmosphere

Evapotranspiration

Fractional vegetation cover

Added since 2022

Vegetation production
Agricultural water use

Example from
Castle Dale, UT, USA
Intercomparison between datasets

Example from SW Idaho, USA

Relationship Between Drought and Rangeland Production

Example from BLM grazing allotment,

west of Elko, NV, USA
 Performing automated
reporting for all BLM land units

Geo for Good Summit 2023 Climate Change Adaptation Lightning Talks
…an Earth Engine database?
module

Timeseries ee.ImageCollection() Land unit ee.FeatureCollection()

Drought, vegetation, fire. etc, BLM Field Offices, grazing allotments, etc.
…an Earth Engine database?
module

….spatially reduced values stored as pixels in ee.ImageCollection() asset

…to rapidly populate PDF and PNG
reports for all BLM land units

coming soon…
Climate Engine Reports

reports.climateengine.org/drought

ClimateEngine.org
 Thank you! ClimateEngine.org
ClimateEngine.org

@ClimateEngOrg

youtube.com/@ClimateEngineOrg

climateengine@gmail.com

Eric Jensen
ericjensen.earth

@RangeSpatialist

linkedin.com/in/eric-r-jensen/

eric.jensen@dri.edu

Geo for Good Summit 2023 Climate Change Adaptation Lightning Talks
Climate Change Adaptation Lightning Talks

Using EE to support the Amah Mutsun Tribal

Band’s work to restore cultural fire
Annie Taylor, UC Berkeley
annalisetaylor@berkeley.edu
Research conducted with Alexii Sigona (Amah Mutsun)

Geo for Good Summit 2023

 #GeoForGood23
Image: Santa Cruz Sentinel
Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and Land Trust

Amah Mutsun Land Trust Vision:

Conserve and restore Indigenous
cultural and natural resources;
Steward our lands and waters;
Research and teach the ways of nature.
Image: AMLT
 What role does fire play within the Tribe’s homelands?
Three approaches:

Interview with Vegetation Survey Sentinel-2 Imagery

Tribal Members
● Taylor, Sigona, Kelly. (In review). Centering Amah Mutsun voices in the analysis of a culturally important,
fire-managed coastal grassland. Ecological Applications.
● Taylor, Sigona, Kelly. (2023). Modeling spatial distributions of Amah Mutsun priority cultural plants to support #GeoForGood23
Indigenous cultural revitalization. Ecosphere, 14(1), e4374.
Tracking grassland recovery from fire with Sentinel-2
 “[Cultural fire] opens waterways. It renews the native plants and trees and whether it's for
basketry plants or medicinal uses, I would say that fire is sacred. That’s what mother earth,
it needs, it wants.”
– Amah Mutsun Tribal Member

Image: Mason Cole

Acknowledgements
● Thank you to Alexii Sigona (Amah Mutsun) and Dr. Maggi
Kelly for their research partnership
● Thank you to all of the interview participants for sharing their
insights and stories, and to the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and
Amah Mutsun Land Trust for their continued partnership
over many years

More Resources
Learn more and support the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band
● Protect Juristac campaign
● Amah Mutsun Land Trust

LandsatLinkr: harmonize historical Landsat imagery

Resources from a workshop at G4G 2022 (developed by
Annie Taylor and Justin Braaten)
● Worksheet (bit.ly/LLR_EE), Slides, and Recording
● Landsat Linkr Github (bit.ly/ee-llr)

Contact: annalisetaylor@berkely.edu
#GeoForGood23
Climate Change Adaptation Lightning Talks

Advancing Geospatial Research, Education

and Climate Change Mitigation in Alaska with
Cloud-First, Multi-Modality Remotely Sensed
Data using Aerial Collection from the US
National Coastal Mapping Program
Matthew Hutchinson and Erin Trochim,
Woolpert and University of Alaska Fairbanks

Geo for Good Summit 2023

 Aerial Collection

Surveying & Lidar Alaska Focused Vessel-Based Sonar Detailed Bathymetry Detailed Topography
Climate Change Adaptation Lightning Talks

Using geospatial analytics to guide

large-scale freshwater conservation
programs with BasinScout
Elliot Hohn, The Freshwater Trust

Geo for Good Summit 2023

Agricultural conservation is climate change adaptation
BasinScout for watershed scale conservation planning

Image source: Wikipedia Commons - https://shorturl.at/esvC1 Image source: UNDP - https://shorturl.at/tGY07 Image source: New York Times - https://shorturl.at/yDEG6

#GeoForGood23
BasinScout: watershed-scale prioritization tool

#GeoForGood23
Streamlined access to key datasets with GEE
BasinScout for watershed scale conservation planning

Coming soon?

ET ET ET
Crops ET Imagery Soils
Source: Cropland Data Source: OpenET Source: NAIP, USDA; LandSat,
Source: SSURGO, USDA-NRCS
Layer, USDA-NASS USGS; Sentinel, ESA

● Impacts water use

● Helps estimate crop water needs ● Useful feature in ● Impacts soil erosion
● Impacts runoff
● Useful feature in classification classification models ● Impacts infiltration
● Associated with management
models ● Used to generate indices ● Impacts crop productivity
actions
like NDVI, NDWI, etc.
● Shows temporal trends

#GeoForGood23
Basin-scale analysis from start to finish
BasinScout for watershed scale conservation planning

Current conditions Estimation of Optimized conservation

assessment implementation impact project portfolio
● Segment field boundaries ● Determine feasibility of BMPs
● Classify irrigation type ● Estimate cost of BMP implementation ● Chooses projects with greatest benefit per cost
● Classify crop rotations ● Estimate post-implementation water use ● Can incorporate recruitment success rates
● Estimate water use (ET / irrigation efficiency) ● Estimate post-implementation runoff ● Provides roadmap for implementation
● Estimate sediment and nutrient runoff ● Estimate post-implementation economic impacts
● Estimate regional economic impacts ● Estimate project benefits vs. costs

Some tools
we use:
Climate Change Adaptation Lightning Talks

Scaling regenerative agricultural supply

chain programs with GEE
Rebecca Willison, Farmer’s Business Network, Inc.

Geo for Good Summit 2023

 Farmer’s Business Network (FBN)
regenerative ag supply chain programs

FBN helps farmers maximize their profit potential with data and
technology:
● Analytics and data transparency ● Crop insurance
● Crop inputs and livestock supplies ● Crop marketing
● Inputs and land financing ● Community

60,000+ FARMS
FBN connects farmers to grain buyers and downstream markets 125M NETWORK ACRES
to get a premium for grain with environmental scoring and/or
certain regenerative practices:

Food
market
Feed
opportunities
FARMER Fuel
GRAIN BUYER

#GeoForGood23
FBN Sustainability modeling pipeline combines on-farm data and derived
features from remote sensing to verify practices and measure outcomes

Collect data from farmers Assess data quality Measure & report outcomes

Farmer survey
data

Farmer enrolls Data Environmental Reporting /

Machine data
in program confidence models certification

Field FBN Network

boundaries data

Geospatial
attributes

#GeoForGood23
 Model development process using FBN Network data and GEE

STEP 1: BUILD STEP 2: VALIDATE STEP 3: TEST

Leverage data science Validate models against Confirm in field with

methods to train models independent dataset farmer-contributed data
on FBN Network data or field visits
using GEE

Example: winter cover crop detection

Generate predictions for cover crops
planted in fall 2022 and confirm with
field visit

Train on FBN Network cover

crop data
Validate on cover crop data
from sustainability programs
and manually labeled images #GeoForGood23
 Key features built with GEE

cover crops residue burning tillage

irrigation

crop type

#GeoForGood23
Climate Change Adaptation Lightning Talks

SEETileDrain: Spatially Explicit Estimate of

Tile Drainage across the US Midwest using
remote sensing and machine learning
Luwen Wan, Michigan State University
Anthony Kendall, Michigan State University
David Hyndman, The University of Texas at Dallas

Geo for Good Summit 2023

Agricultural Tile Drainage System

Tile Drainage: A form of water management that Purposes and Necessities

removes excess sub-surface water from fields
● Remove the excess water
and allow sufficient air space within the soil
● Increase crop yields
Tile Drainage is widespread in US Midwest
No spatially explicit tile drainage information are available across large scales (i.e., US Midwest)

% of the tile/land Tile Drains (2017) within the study

boundary:
● 21.6% of cropland are tiled,
accounting for 92% of all tiled US
acres

USDA-NASS
● Self-reported area from farmers
● County-level statistics

The effect of tile drainage on crop production, hydrology, and the environment is elusive
due to the lack of fine resolution, spatially-explicit tile drainage area information.
SEETileDrain Workflow
Classified tile
40,000 Training
Input datasets and variables drainage map
Samples 1. Landsat (NDVI, NDWI)
● Tile ● Binary; 30m
2. SMAP (soil moisture)
● No-tile 3. DEM (slope) ● 2017
4. MODIS (Land surface temp)
5. GridMET (aridity)
6. TerraClimate (actual ET)
7. POLARIS (soil properties)
8. gSSURGO (soil drainage class)
9. NHD (distance to the nearest
canals/ditch)
10. CDL (Cropland)
11. HLR (hydrologic landscape region) Classified tile drain
Cropland
Tile permits
Random Forest Classification: 500 trees + 7 variables per split
Accuracy:
● Pixel level: Overall accuracy (95.5%); F1 score (0.9)
● County level: R square of 0.69 by comparing with areas from USDA-NASS
Variable Importance Measures

1. Mean Decrease Accuracy

● Permutation-based importance
2. Mean Accuracy Gini
● Impurity-based importance
3. Shapley Value
● Average contribution of a variable value to the
prediction

Overall Importance based on three importance

measures, by assigning scores (1-31) to each variable, and
summing up to get the total score
● Score of 93, most important
● Score of 3, least important
Conclusion and Implications
● Satellite imagery and random forest provide the potential to explicitly map tile
drainage across a large scale at fine resolution.

● Tile drainage areas change over time in the past decades

● Future tile drainage content prediction under climate change scenarios

● Crop, hydrological, and water quality modeling

Reference: Wan, L. (2023). Quantifying Nutrient Transport Pathways Using Spatially

Explicit Modeling and Remote Sensing (Doctoral dissertation, Michigan State University).
Email: luwenwan@stanford.edu Website: https://luwenwan.me/ Twitter: @Luwen_Wan
Climate Change Adaptation Lightning Talks

Systematically tracking the hourly

progression of large wildfires using GOES
satellite observations
Tianjia (Tina) Liu, UC Irvine

Geo for Good Summit 2023

Tracking Wildfire Perimeters Using GOES in Earth Engine
GOFER: GOES-Observed Fire Event Representation

Goal: Improve the Temporal Resolution

of Tracking Fire Progression
● Aim to resolve the fire diurnal cycle
when fires spread most rapidly and
support analyses on extreme wildfire
characterization and prediction
● Sensors on low-earth-orbit satellites are
limited to 2 observations per day (e.g.
MODIS, VIIRS), leading to temporal gaps
in fire tracking datasets
● The GOES geostationary satellites
provide frequent (10-15 min) active fire
detections over its full disk view over
North and South America, but they are
spatially coarse (2 km at equator)

Liu et al. (in review, ESSD)

#GeoForGood23
GOES Provides Critical Insights Into Fire Spread Extremes
GOFER: GOES-Observed Fire Event Representation

Evaluating GOFER Using the 2020 Creek Fire

as an Example
● When the Creek Fire spread very explosively
during the first few days after ignition, the
VIIRS-derived Fire Event Data Suite (FEDS)
shows large gaps between consecutive
perimeters at 12-h intervals
● GOFER fills in these fire progression gaps as
the perimeter of the Creek Fire is changing
rapidly
● Compared to the detailed final perimeter from
California’s Fire and Resource Assessment
(FRAP), GOFER (IoU = 0.86) performs well
compared to FEDS (IoU = 0.87) despite the
lower spatial resolution of GOES

Liu et al. (in review, ESSD)

#GeoForGood23
Hourly Fire Progression of the 10 Largest Fires in California in 2020
Example of the Evolution of Fire Perimeters with Time and Space

Overall spatial
accuracy
Compared to FRAP,
GOFER (IoU = 0.77)
performs reasonably
well compared to FEDS
(IoU = 0.83) despite the
lower spatial resolution
of GOES

Limitations
Near water bodies,
mountainous landscapes,
narrow strips of burned
or unburned areas

Liu et al. (in review, ESSD)

#GeoForGood23
GOFER Visualization on Earth Engine Apps
GOFER perimeters, active fire lines, and fire spread rates
GOFER dataset
Fire perimeters, active
fire lines, and fire
spread rates for 28
large wildfires in CA
from 2019-2021

Applications
Initializing and
validating 3D models of
fire spread, prediction
of fire spread using
meteorological and
human drivers,
improving fire
emissions estimates

Liu et al. (in review, ESSD)

EE Apps: https://globalfires.earthengine.app/view/gofer
Code: https://github.com/tianjialiu/GOFER #GeoForGood23
Dataset: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8327265
 Contact
Tianjia (Tina) Liu
Evaluating Stress on Firefighting Resources Email: tianjia.liu@uci.edu
Example application of the GOFER Dataset Website: https://tianjialiu.com

Using the temporal and spatial

information on the growth in fire-wide
area and active fire lines from GOFER,
we can:
● pair with data on meteorology,
firefighting resources used,
topography, and fuels
● evaluate the stress on firefighting
resources, especially when fires are
burning simultaneously
● understand the conditions for
structure damage and loss

Creek Fire structures

damaged and destroyed
(Source: CAL FIRE)
#GeoForGood23
 #GeoForGood23

Thank you!