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About GEE ACOLITE

Project Description

GEE ACOLITE is an adaptation of the ACOLITE software (Atmospheric Correction for Aquatic Applications of satellites for Identifying and Tracking Ecosystems) optimized to work with Google Earth Engine (GEE) and Sentinel-2 imagery.

The project combines:

  • ACOLITE: State-of-the-art atmospheric correction algorithms
  • Google Earth Engine: Scalable cloud processing
  • Python: Flexible programmatic interface

Motivation

Problem

Atmospheric correction of satellite images for aquatic applications is complex:

  • Standard algorithms (Sen2Cor, LaSRC) are designed for land
  • Local processing of large areas is computationally expensive
  • Integrating multiple tools is complicated

Solution

GEE ACOLITE offers:

✅ Specialized atmospheric correction for water
✅ Scalable processing in GEE
✅ Simple and consistent Python interface
✅ Integration with the scientific Python ecosystem

History

Version 1.0.1

  • Initial public release on PyPI
  • Support for Sentinel-2
  • DSF atmospheric correction via ACOLITE
  • Water quality parameters (SPM, turbidity, Chl-a, Rrs)

Version 1.2.0

  • Bathymetry improvements: pSDB median filter
  • Bathymetry calibration enhancements (calibrate_sdb, apply_calibration, multi_image)
  • ICMAN attribution

Main Components

ACOLITE Core

Developed by Dr. Quinten Vanhellemont (RBINS):

  • Dark Spectrum Fitting (DSF) for AOT
  • Pre-calculated LUTs with OSOAA/6S
  • Atmospheric gas correction
  • Aquatic product algorithms

Citation: 

Vanhellemont, Q., & Ruddick, K. (2018). Atmospheric correction of 
metre-scale optical satellite data for inland and coastal water
applications. Remote Sensing of Environment, 216, 586-597.

Google Earth Engine

Google's platform for geospatial analysis:

  • Petabyte-scale data catalog
  • Distributed cloud processing
  • Python and JavaScript API

Python Scientific Stack

  • NumPy/SciPy: Numerical calculations
  • Pandas: Data manipulation
  • Matplotlib: Visualizations
  • geemap: Interactive GEE interface

Use Cases

Scientific Research

  • Water quality monitoring
  • Eutrophication studies
  • Sediment dynamics
  • Benthic habitat mapping

Environmental Management

  • Algal bloom monitoring
  • Turbidity tracking
  • Impact assessment
  • Coastal planning

Education

  • Remote sensing teaching
  • Student projects
  • Workshops and courses

Team

Lead Developer

Sergio (Aouei) - Development and implementation

Contributors

Acknowledgments

  • Dr. Quinten Vanhellemont - ACOLITE development
  • GEE Community - Tools and support

License

GEE ACOLITE is licensed under GPL-3.0, same as ACOLITE.

Copyright (C) 2024 Sergio

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

See LICENSE for details.

Dependencies

Main

Package Version License Purpose
ACOLITE >=2023.6 GPL-3.0 Atmospheric correction
earthengine-api >=0.1.300 Apache-2.0 GEE interface
numpy >=1.20 BSD Numerical calculations
scipy >=1.7 BSD Interpolation

Optional

Package Purpose
geemap Interactive visualization
matplotlib Plots
pandas Data analysis

Citation

If you use GEE ACOLITE in your research, please cite:

@software{gee_acolite2026,
  title = {GEE ACOLITE: Atmospheric correction for Google Earth Engine},
  author = {Sergio},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://github.com/Aouei/gee_acolite},
  version = {1.0.1}
}

And also ACOLITE:

@article{vanhellemont2018atmospheric,
  title={Atmospheric correction of metre-scale optical satellite data 
         for inland and coastal water applications},
  author={Vanhellemont, Q and Ruddick, K},
  journal={Remote Sensing of Environment},
  volume={216},
  pages={586--597},
  year={2018},
  publisher={Elsevier}
}

Contact

Project

  • Vanhellemont, Q. (2019). Adaptation of the dark spectrum fitting atmospheric correction for aquatic applications of the Landsat and Sentinel-2 archives. Remote Sensing of Environment, 225, 175-192.
  • Vanhellemont, Q., & Ruddick, K. (2018). Atmospheric correction of metre-scale optical satellite data for inland and coastal water applications. Remote Sensing of Environment, 216, 586-597.
  • Gorelick, N., et al. (2017). Google Earth Engine: Planetary-scale geospatial analysis for everyone. Remote Sensing of Environment, 202, 18-27.

Project Status

Stability

  • ⚠️ Beta: API may change
  • ✅ Functional: Main use cases work
  • 🚧 Actively developed: Continuous improvements

Metrics

GitHub stars GitHub forks GitHub issues GitHub license

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See Contribution Guide.

Acknowledgments

This project would not be possible without:

  • 🎓 Scientific community of aquatic remote sensing
  • 🌍 ESA/Copernicus for open Sentinel-2 data
  • 🔬 RBINS and Dr. Vanhellemont for ACOLITE
  • ☁️ Google for Earth Engine
  • 🐍 Python community and scientific library developers

GEE ACOLITE - Making aquatic atmospheric correction accessible and scalable.

This software was developed at the Institute of Marine Sciences of Andalusia (ICMAN-CSIC), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Puerto Real, Spain.