Google Earth Engine como herramienta de detección de cambios espaciales e multitemporales: Caso glaciar Quelccaya, Perú
Tropical glaciers are reserves and sources of fresh water, they are excellent indicators of the climate and are in a process of glacial retreat in its superficial extension, for that reason the importance of the study of environments with glacier to mitigate its effects, This present study was realized the Spatial and multi temporal analysis in a period of 41 years from 1975 to 2016, in the most important glacier of the tropics Glacier “Quelccaya", located in the Andes of southern Peru. With the Landsat digital satellite imaging cloud support in the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform, it was made including coverage’s adjacent to the Glacier, such as wetlands and lagoons. To obtain maps were used indices, NDSI (Normalized Difference Snow Index), NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) and NDWI (Normalized Difference Water index) for the detection of Glaciers, wetlands and lagoons respectively, added the slope map for to differentiate cloud gaps, which were integrated and related. The results show an evident glacial loss, in the last 41 years, the glacier has lost more than 40% of its surface, which has an effect and spatial relation with the increase of the surface extensions of the wetlands and lagoons. This study shows the spatial and temporal relationships between the threes coverage’s, Highlighting the use of GEE as an image processing tool in a short time.