Spectral transformations

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There are several spectral transformation methods in Earth Engine. These include instance methods on images such as normalizedDifference(), unmix(), rgbToHsv() and hsvToRgb().

Pan sharpening

Pan sharpening improves the resolution of a multiband image through enhancement provided by a corresponding panchromatic image with finer resolution. The rgbToHsv() and hsvToRgb() methods are useful for pan sharpening.

Code Editor (JavaScript)

// Load a Landsat 8 top-of-atmosphere reflectance image.
var image = ee.Image('LANDSAT/LC08/C02/T1_TOA/LC08_044034_20140318');
Map.addLayer(
    image,
    {bands: ['B4', 'B3', 'B2'], min: 0, max: 0.25, gamma: [1.1, 1.1, 1]},
    'rgb');

// Convert the RGB bands to the HSV color space.
var hsv = image.select(['B4', 'B3', 'B2']).rgbToHsv();

// Swap in the panchromatic band and convert back to RGB.
var sharpened = ee.Image.cat([
  hsv.select('hue'), hsv.select('saturation'), image.select('B8')
]).hsvToRgb();

// Display the pan-sharpened result.
Map.setCenter(-122.44829, 37.76664, 13);
Map.addLayer(sharpened,
             {min: 0, max: 0.25, gamma: [1.3, 1.3, 1.3]},
             'pan-sharpened');

Python setup

See the Python Environment page for information on the Python API and using geemap for interactive development.

import ee
import geemap.core as geemap

Colab (Python)

# Load a Landsat 8 top-of-atmosphere reflectance image.
image = ee.Image('LANDSAT/LC08/C02/T1_TOA/LC08_044034_20140318')

# Convert the RGB bands to the HSV color space.
hsv = image.select(['B4', 'B3', 'B2']).rgbToHsv()

# Swap in the panchromatic band and convert back to RGB.
sharpened = ee.Image.cat(
    [hsv.select('hue'), hsv.select('saturation'), image.select('B8')]
).hsvToRgb()

# Define a map centered on San Francisco, California.
map_sharpened = geemap.Map(center=[37.76664, -122.44829], zoom=13)

# Add the image layers to the map and display it.
map_sharpened.add_layer(
    image,
    {
        'bands': ['B4', 'B3', 'B2'],
        'min': 0,
        'max': 0.25,
        'gamma': [1.1, 1.1, 1],
    },
    'rgb',
)
map_sharpened.add_layer(
    sharpened,
    {'min': 0, 'max': 0.25, 'gamma': [1.3, 1.3, 1.3]},
    'pan-sharpened',
)
display(map_sharpened)

Spectral unmixing

Spectral unmixing is implemented in Earth Engine as the image.unmix() method. (For more flexible methods, see the Array Transformations page). The following is an example of unmixing Landsat 5 with predetermined urban, vegetation and water endmembers:

Code Editor (JavaScript)

// Load a Landsat 5 image and select the bands we want to unmix.
var bands = ['B1', 'B2', 'B3', 'B4', 'B5', 'B6', 'B7'];
var image = ee.Image('LANDSAT/LT05/C02/T1/LT05_044034_20080214')
  .select(bands);
Map.setCenter(-122.1899, 37.5010, 10); // San Francisco Bay
Map.addLayer(image, {bands: ['B4', 'B3', 'B2'], min: 0, max: 128}, 'image');

// Define spectral endmembers.
var urban = [88, 42, 48, 38, 86, 115, 59];
var veg = [50, 21, 20, 35, 50, 110, 23];
var water = [51, 20, 14, 9, 7, 116, 4];

// Unmix the image.
var fractions = image.unmix([urban, veg, water]);
Map.addLayer(fractions, {}, 'unmixed');

Python setup

See the Python Environment page for information on the Python API and using geemap for interactive development.

import ee
import geemap.core as geemap

Colab (Python)

# Load a Landsat 5 image and select the bands we want to unmix.
bands = ['B1', 'B2', 'B3', 'B4', 'B5', 'B6', 'B7']
image = ee.Image('LANDSAT/LT05/C02/T1/LT05_044034_20080214').select(bands)

# Define spectral endmembers.
urban = [88, 42, 48, 38, 86, 115, 59]
veg = [50, 21, 20, 35, 50, 110, 23]
water = [51, 20, 14, 9, 7, 116, 4]

# Unmix the image.
fractions = image.unmix([urban, veg, water])

# Define a map centered on San Francisco Bay.
map_fractions = geemap.Map(center=[37.5010, -122.1899], zoom=10)

# Add the image layers to the map and display it.
map_fractions.add_layer(
    image, {'bands': ['B4', 'B3', 'B2'], 'min': 0, 'max': 128}, 'image'
)
map_fractions.add_layer(fractions, None, 'unmixed')
display(map_fractions)
unmixed_sf
Figure 1. Landsat 5 imagery unmixed to urban (red), vegetation (green) and water (blue) fractions. San Francisco bay area, California, USA.