Announcement: On November 13, 2024, all users will need to use a Cloud project in order to access Earth Engine. After this date, continued individual access without a Cloud project will require an exception.

Importing Table Data

Uploading table assets

You can use the Asset Manager or command line interface (CLI) to upload datasets in the Shapefile or CSV format. (See Importing Raster Data for details on importing rasters using the Code Editor or CLI.) Your uploaded assets are initially private, but can be shared as described in the Sharing Assets Section.

Warning: All vector data in Earth Engine is stored in a spherical coordinate system (specifically, EPSG:4326). When data is uploaded, the resultant coordinate transformation may have unintended consequences that include change of geometry type (e.g. from polygon to linestring or point) or incorrect georeferencing. To minimize the possibility of unintended changes, first reproject vector data to EPSG:4326 before uploading.

Upload a Shapefile

To upload a Shapefile from the Code Editor, click the button, then select Shape files under the Table Upload section. An upload dialog similar to Figure 1 will be presented. Click the SELECT button and navigate to a Shapefile or Zip archive containing a Shapefile on your local file system. When selecting a .shp file, be sure to select the related .dbf, .shx and .prj files. Earth Engine will default to WGS84 (longitude, latitude) coordinates if a .prj file is not provided. If you are uploading a Zip archive, make sure it contains only one Shapefile (set of .shp, .dbf, .shx, .prj, etc.) and no duplicate filenames. Make sure filenames do not include additional periods or dots. (Filenames will include a single period before the extension.)

Give the table an appropriate asset ID (which doesn't already exist) in your user folder. Click UPLOAD to start the upload.

Upload a CSV file

To upload a CSV from the Code Editor, activate the Assets tab, then click the button and select CSV file under the Table Upload section. An upload dialog similar to Figure 2 will be presented. Click the SELECT button and navigate to a .csv file on your local file system. Give the table a unique, relevant asset ID name. Click OK to start the upload.

The CSV file should contain a row for each feature and as many columns as there are properties or variables for the feature set. If features are geospatial, they must have a geolocation defined by either a geometry string (GeoJSON, WKT) or x and y position properties. If the CSV file is an export from a GIS or geospatial data tool such as GDAL/OGR, a properly formatted and named geometry column should already exist. Alternatively, two columns for x and y coordinates representing point locations can be defined in a spreadsheet application and exported as CSV format along with any other variables.

Advanced Options

In the Advanced options section of the upload dialog, view and change default settings. Performance of Earth Engine can be improved by splitting up geometries that have a large number of vertices. Earth Engine does not allow features with more than 1 million vertices. During table upload, Earth Engine will automatically split geometries that have more than 1 million vertices. You can specify a lower value to improve vector rendering performance.

Earth Engine will attempt to detect a primary geometry column and assumes the data projection is WGS84 unless otherwise specified. The geodesic state of the geometries are determined by the default edge interpretation of the given projection (e.g. WGS84 uses geodesic geometries), but this can be overridden in the Advanced settings menu. If the geometry of your data are points defined by x and y columns, be sure to name the respective columns "longitude" and "latitude" or specify the x and y column names under Advanced settings.

Tracking upload progress

After starting a table upload, an 'Asset ingestion' task is added to the Task Manager, found under the Tasks tab at the right side of the Code Editor. Check the upload status by clicking on the ? icon that appears when hovering over the task. To cancel an upload, click on the spinning icon next to the task. Once the ingestion is complete, the task cell will turn blue and the asset will appear in your user folder under the Assets tab with a icon.

Table Upload Limits

When uploading tables, the maximum number of features in the table is 100 million. The maximum number of properties on a feature is 1,024. These limits ensure that the resulting asset can be queried efficiently. Additionally, each feature has a maximum number of vertices as explained in the "Advanced Options" section above.

Loading a table asset to your script

To create a FeatureCollection in your script from a table asset, import it as described on the Managing Assets page.