Citation:

land7040118

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Abstract:

Very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery from Google Earth and Microsoft Bing Maps is increasingly being used in a variety of applications from computer sciences to arts and humanities. In the field of remote sensing, one use of this imagery is to create reference data sets through visual interpretation, e.g., to complement existing training data or to aid in the validation of land-cover products. Through new applications such as Collect Earth, this imagery is also being used for monitoring purposes in the form of statistical surveys obtained through visual interpretation. However, little is known about where VHR satellite imagery exists globally or the dates of the imagery. Here we present a global overview of the spatial and temporal distribution of VHR satellite imagery in Google Earth and Microsoft Bing Maps. The results show an uneven availability globally, with biases in certain areas such as the USA, Europe and India, and with clear discontinuities at political borders. We also show that the availability of VHR imagery is currently not adequate for monitoring protected areas and deforestation, but is better suited for monitoring changes in cropland or urban areas using visual interpretation

Coverage:

Median Latitude: 32.921822 * Median Longitude: 17.557837 * South-bound Latitude: -54.500000 * West-bound Longitude: -179.500000 * North-bound Latitude: 83.500000 * East-bound Longitude: 179.500000

Date/Time Start: 1930-01-01T00:00:00 * Date/Time End: 2016-01-01T00:00:00

Comment:

Note: (1) Information on growing and non-growing seasons has been derived from the remote sensing product: https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/dataset_discovery/measures/measures_products_table/vipphen_ndvi_v004

(2) Google provides full global coverage by images, in contrast to Bing. However, in many areas, these are Landsat-based images (from 1984 up to now). For more objective comparison with Bing imagery, we have excluded those areas from the analysis.

Parameter(s):

#	Name	Short Name	Unit	Principal Investigator	Comment
1	Identification	ID		Lesiv, Myroslava
2	LONGITUDE	Longitude		Lesiv, Myroslava	Geocode – Coordinates of the point
3	LATITUDE	Latitude		Lesiv, Myroslava	Geocode – Coordinates of the point
4	DATE/TIME	Date/Time		Lesiv, Myroslava	Geocode – Year of the image available in Bing
5	Number	n	#	Lesiv, Myroslava	Number of images available in Google Earth
6	DATE/TIME	Date/Time		Lesiv, Myroslava	Geocode – Year of the most recent image available in Google
7	DATE/TIME	Date/Time		Lesiv, Myroslava	Geocode – Year of the oldest high resolution image available in Google
8	Number	n	#	Lesiv, Myroslava	Number of unique years in Google
9	Number	n	#	Lesiv, Myroslava	Indicates availability of images in 4 different seasons and varying from 1 to 4. Those seasons are December-February, March-May, June-August, September and November
10	Index	Index		Lesiv, Myroslava	indicates availability of images in growing seasons:, 0 - no information on seasons, 1 - only in non-growing season, 2 - only in growing season, 3 - there are images from growing and non-growing seasons

License:

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-3.0)

Size:

59168 data points

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