Cloud-based geospatial services for building capacity and safeguarding heritage in climatically marginal landscapes

Our world is changing rapidly, and nowhere is this transition more pronounced than in the climatic extremes of our planet. For the people who call these places home, the myriad threats facing their rich cultural landscapes in the context of the current climate change crisis—rising sea levels, fluvial erosion, drought, sand dune encroachment—are becoming a source of great social anxiety. Furthermore, these environmental pressures are compounded by population growth and urban development. Using two contrasting study regions, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in Alaska, USA and Mauritania, we explore how free cloud-based geospatial services such as Google Earth Engine (GEE) might be used to build capacity for communities in the Arctic and the Sahel. We present five analytical remote sensing tools built in GEE, each one designed to address specific and urgent environmental concerns in the regions in question.