In this assignment you will use what you have learned over the semester to highlight some ongoing or recent changes to the earth's surface.

The earth is changing every day. With a wide variety of satellite and aerial-borne sensors, we have the ability to monitor these changes in almost real-time. In this lab we will use publicly available satellite imagery to show rapid changes to the earth's surface. I will demonstrate using Sentinel 2 data but you are welcome to use other imagery so long as it comes from a publicly available source.

The final product will be a cartographic product highlighting how your area of interest has changed. What you choose to focus on is up to you. Some ideas:

• volcanic eruptions
• deforestation
• urban sprawl
• forest fire
• flooding
• landslides
• open pit mine
• glaciers calving/melting
• concentrated animal feed operations

If you don't know where/when to find something, look at recent news for ideas.

Background reading:

• Sentinel 2
  • https://developers.planet.com/docs/planetschool/an-introduction-to-cloud-optimized-geotiffs-cogs-part-1-overview/
• EO Browser
  • https://www.sentinel-hub.com/explore/eobrowser/
• Sentinel 2 indexes
  • https://custom-scripts.sentinel-hub.com/custom-scripts/sentinel-2/indexdb/

Demonstrate change. Change is dynamic. There are different ways of highlighting change, including but not limited to:

• Time series comparisons
• Change analysis
  • Change detection, image differencing, scatter plots, classification matrices
• Indexes
  • Different band combinations, ratios, or normalized differences can really highlight a physical attribute on the landscape.
• Graphs
  • Indexes over time, aggregated by region (like the rasterio NDVI time series)

This assignment is a lot more flexible than previous assignments. Please use QGIS for your final cartographic product. For processing you are welcome to use a codespace.

This class has lacked in opportunities to be creative so let's unleash that potential. Be creative in what you choose and how you present it.

Submit a pull request to merge your assignment branch with master (but do not merge). The assginment branch should include:

• Either of the following (both are not necessary):
  • earth-day-map.pdf - cartographic product produced in QGIS that tells a story of recent earth changes
  • earth-day-map.ipynb - a Jupyter notebook that tells a story of recent earth changes
• methods.md - a text markdown file describing your methods, including:
  • data sources
  • software used
  • license restrictions associated with data use
  • This should be reflected in either the map or the notebook but more details can be provided in the methods.md file.