Additional Resources

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Navigating the GEE documentation

The GEE documentation is comprehensive. Depending on what you are looking for, there are two main places in the official documentation to look: the Guides and the Reference (API documentation).

Note: Google Earth Engine (GEE) can be accessed through two programming languages: JavaScript, and Python. In this training we have used the Python interface, but be aware that some of the documentation will show examples in JavaScript instead of Python. However, the Earth Engine commands are similar in both languages. If needed, the geemap module that we use in this training has a function for converting JavaScript code to Python. A tutorial is available here, and the function documentation is here.

Guides

The guides are a good place to start for beginners, or when you aren’t sure about the steps to carry out a certain task.

Quickstart guides

The quickstart guides are a great entry point for getting up and running with GEE. See the Quickstart guide for GEE in Python.

Use this when: you need a refresher on the basics of GEE with python, or help with setting up a Colab notebook to use with GEE.

Tutorials

The tutorials can help when you need extra guidance on how to carry out a specific task. In addition to the many tutorials available online, GEE has tutorials here and a set of community tutorials here. Note: See the left sidebar of each website for additional tutorials.

Use this when: you want guidance on how to carry out a specific task, such as how to do time series analysis with GEE

Reference (API documentation)

The API documentation provides information about specific functions in the ee interface to Python (and JavaScript). This can be helpful when you know which function you need to use, but need help with its exact usage, i.e., the inputs it accepts and the object it outputs.

Use this when: you need more information about how to use a specific ee function.

• Example: you want to use ee.Geometry.BBox to define your region of interest, but you don’t remember the order of bounding coordinates it accepts

Python modules

There are many additional Python modules that you can use in your analysis besides ee. We list here documentation for Python modules commonly used for geospatial work in Python (some of which we used in this training).

• geemap: use for mapping ee data
• numpy: use for working with arrays and matrices
• scipy: provides general algorithms common in math and science. In particular, see the stats submodule for using and defining statistical distributions.
• matplotlib: general Python plotting module
• pandas: Python module for handling tabular data (dataframes)
• geopandas: extends pandas functionality to make it easier to perform geometric operations
• xarray: use for working with labelled multi-dimensional arrays (including data from netCDF and other raster files)
• cartopy: use for mapping geospatial data in different projected coordinate systems

Other resources

Note: Awesome Earth Engine is a great curated list of Google Earth Engine resources and much more comprehensive than what is included here.

• These introductory slides from the GEE documentation give a nice overview of the different data types Earth Engine uses.
• The authors of the geemap package have several resources to help with learning GEE and geemap, including:
  • a series of GEE and geemap tutorials on the Open Geospatial Solutions YouTube channel
  • a set of notebook-based tutorials

Free Courses

If you are interested in more training on Google Earth Engine and/or Python programming, there are many free courses available online.

GEE

• United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health (UNU-INWEH): Spatial Data Management with Google Earth Engine
• Spatial Thoughts End-to-End Google Earth Engine Course

Python

• University of Helsinki: Python Programming MOOC 2025
• Coursera: Python for Everybody. See all course materials, including the book, here
• Codecademy: Learn Python 3. See additional Codecademy resources here