Application for Extracting and Exploring Analysis Ready Samples (AρρEEARS)

Imagine a data site where you can upload your own data for processing and spatial analysis, using tools that you do not own!  The Application for Extracting and Exploring Analysis Ready Samples (AρρEEARS) allows you to do just that.  I recently attended a presentation about this application at the Applied Geography Conference on AppEEARS and was very impressed.  AppEEARS offers a simple, efficient way to access and transform geospatial data from a variety of federal data archives, and hence merits highlighting in this Spatial Reserves data blog. AppEEARS enables data users to subset and extract geospatial datasets using spatial, temporal, and band/layer parameters.

Two types of sample requests are available: point samples for geographic coordinates and area samples for spatial areas via vector polygons.  Results stay on the LP DAAC site for 30 days, during which time you can archive them somewhere else or download them to your own device or server.

You need to have an Earthdata free account to use the site, but once you get one here, you can be off and running.  AppEEARS is tied to the LP DAAC (Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center), in which there is no shortage of data.  Sample requests submitted to AρρEEARS provide users not only with data values, but also associated quality data values. Interactive visualizations with summary statistics are provided for each sample within the application, which allow users to preview and interact with their samples before downloading their data.

What’s more, you can also access the AρρEEARS API. This API allows users to write programs to interact with AρρEEARS. This is largely the same API that powers the AρρEEARS user interface.

My favorite part of AppEEARS is the tutorials and lessons that are in the e-learning resources zone, here.   Presentations, videos, and webinars are housed there, but my favorite part is the tutorials.  These are detailed, clear, and can be used as self-contained lessons for you, your colleagues, or students to learn about analysis methods, spatial data, and earth phenomena such as wildfires.  For example, using a tutorial written by Danielle Golon from Innovate Inc (a USGS contractor), you can generate remote sensing-derived environmental descriptors to monitor Yosemite National Park, without downloading the remotely sensed data itself:  All of your processing is done on the AppEEARS site, and you will use imagery, box plots, whisker plots of NDVI values, and other tools and data to analyze several fires from 2013 to 2018 over space and time.   You will use NASA Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite data (VIIRS) and MODIS data (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer).

Using another tutorial, you will generate environmental descriptors of bus stops in the Phoenix metro area to determine which bus stops could benefit from heat relief shelters.  This tutorial uses MODIS data and daily surface weather data.

 

Sample AppEEARS temporal data for fire analysis.  

I highly recommend giving the AppEEARS resources and tools a try.

–Joseph Kerski