Use of Google Earth Engine for tracking Land Use Changes in the Azov Sea Basin

Google Earth Engine revolutionizes land change analysis, as it provides possibilities to analyse satellite imagery and other datasets via cloud-computing technology and server-sidedJavaScript programming. This saves resources on the client’s side and can lead to vast improvements of results for scientists of all levels. The application of this new tool was tested on the land use classification of the Azov Sea basin and its subbasins. In total, a time series of seven land use maps from 1985 to 2015 was created, and urbanization and deforestation trends were detected. Additionally, the change within the region of the Donbas conflict was analysed from 2013 to 2017 to track the effect of the war on the environment. Subsequently, the collapse of the Soviet Union as a driver of agricultural land abandonment was discussed and examined. NASA population datasets were analysed to determine the relationship between the urbanization of the region and population change. Finally, the precipitation deficit of the Upper Don catchment basin was calculated with GLDAS data from 1984 to 2010 to draw conclusions on the effect of local land use changes on the water balance. It was concluded that the rising proportion of built-up land could have caused a rise in the local temperature in interaction with climate change, which caused the local evapotranspiration rates to rise and the water level of the Tsimlyansk reservoir to decrease.