Google Earth historical imagery disappeared?

[Sharad Lele]

Folks,

Over the last few days, it appears as if Google has removed all historical satellite imagery for India for the 2000-2019 period. Just last week, I was using imagery from 2005 and 2003 for our field sites in MP and Chhattisgarh. But as of this weekend, there is NO historical imagery between 1985 and 2019! I have checked several different locations in India.

Can others confirm this? This is a huge loss for us and the wider public--e.g., historical imagery is crucial in the implementation of the Forest Rights Act. Is there a way we can ask Google to reinstate the imagery?

Sharad

[Ashish Mishra]

Hey Sharad,

I'm experiencing a similar issue (Can't access any image between 1985 and 2020). A user has posted this on the Google Earth community (https://support.google.com/earth/thread/213289502/the-historical-imagery-on-google-earth-pro-for-india-is-not-available-any-clues-as-to-why?hl=en), but no reply yet. Let's hope it's a minor glitch and will be fixed soon.  

*************

Ashish

IIT Roorkee

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[Mukesh Yadav]

Hi Sharad, I have just checked, historical images are available on Google Earth. You can try re-installing the application once.

Regards,

On Tue, May 2, 2023 at 8:22 AM Sharad Lele <shara...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Sharad Lele]

Hi Mukesh: Since Ashish has also experienced this ,and all the folks in my team are facing this, and there is a similar problem posted on the GE support thread, I doubt that my problem will be fixed by reinstalling GE on just my laptop. I think the problem is systemic. Here is a screenshot of what the timeslider looks like now:

[Aman Bhargava]

This is a really bad loss if it has been removed permanently, I hope it gets fixed soon.

In the meantime, I often use Sentinel Hub to browse historic and current data. The interface is easy and being able to access multiple sources in one place is useful. Hopefully you're able to make do till this gets resolved. https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/eo-browser/

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/datameet/e7d0baf3-baf7-4529-8f2b-7587dbc0b1edn%40googlegroups.com.

[Vivek Matthew]

Historical imagery seems to still be accessible through the Timelapse feature on Google Earth. I'm not sure if the imagery on there is different, but it looks like it can possibly be of use: https://earth.google.com/web/@12.93438804,77.6926285,904.67103645a,7409.14647402d,35y,0h,0t,0r/data=CjISMBIgNTQ0MGExNzMxYzI1MTFlYTk0NDM4YmI2ODk0NDUyOTciDG1haW5Ob1JhbmRvbQ

Another option would be to access the Google Earth Engine Data Catalog. Again the imagery may not be the same as the original Google Earth historical imagery feature. There is a QGIS plugin to view imagery from the Google Earth Engine Data Catalog inside QGIS.

Most of the historical imagery shown on Google Earth was sourced from Landsat imagery, so that can be accessed from the site Aman had shared. Other possible sources of historical imagery are:

USGS LandsatLook (1982-2023): https://landsatlook.usgs.gov/explore

ESRI's LivingAtlas (2014-2023): https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback