Ecuador’s landscapes—from the Amazon and the Andes to the coast and the Galapagos—are among the most diverse on Earth. But this diversity also brings constant change. Understanding how land use and land cover evolve over time is essential for informed decision-making and effective conservation.
A new video from EcoCiencia in Ecuador showcases how Collect Earth Online (CEO) supported one of the country’s most ambitious land-cover validation efforts to date: the review of more than 20,000 geographic points spanning a time series from 1985 to 2023, nearly 40 years.
Using CEO, a team of expert technicians conducted rigorous, year-by-year visual interpretation of satellite imagery, assigning accurate land-use and land-cover classes to each point. This standardized, replicable workflow—guided by interpretation keys and structured forms—provides high-quality inputs for training machine-learning models and improving national land-cover maps.
The work includes 864 validated points in the Galapagos Islands, strengthening knowledge of one of the planet’s most vulnerable ecosystems.
“Collect Earth Online shows how scientific automation and human technical expertise complement each other to improve land-cover validation and strengthen environmental monitoring. In Ecuador, its ability to adapt to project-specific needs made it a key and efficient tool.” (Sugey Sarango, Validation technical team leader)
These data are now open and freely available for researchers, practitioners, and developers to use in projects, model training, or thematic validation. It is a powerful example of how transparent, collaborative science can accelerate environmental stewardship.
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