GEE ACOLITE

Atmospheric correction for Sentinel-2 imagery on Google Earth Engine using the ACOLITE Dark Spectrum Fitting (DSF) method.

Description

gee_acolite adapts the ACOLITE atmospheric correction to Google Earth Engine workflows. A single global AOT is estimated per image using ACOLITE LUTs (client-side), while all pixel operations run server-side on GEE.

Key features:

• Dark Spectrum Fitting: darkest pixel, percentile, or intercept methods
• AOT Estimation: single fixed AOT per image via LUT interpolation
• Atmospheric Correction: full LUT-based surface reflectance retrieval
• Water Quality Products: SPM, turbidity, chlorophyll-a, Rrs, bathymetry indices
• Cloud & Water Masking: integration with Sentinel-2 Cloud Probability

Installation

pip install gee_acolite

ACOLITE

gee_acolite requires ACOLITE for LUT loading and atmospheric calculations. ACOLITE is not on PyPI — download it from its official repository and add it to your Python path:

import sys
sys.path.append('/path/to/acolite')

import acolite as ac
from gee_acolite import ACOLITE

Quickstart

import sys
sys.path.append('/path/to/acolite')

import ee
import acolite as ac
from gee_acolite import ACOLITE
from gee_acolite.utils.search import search

ee.Initialize(project='your-cloud-project-id')

roi = ee.Geometry.Rectangle([-0.40, 39.27, -0.28, 39.38])
images = search(roi, '2023-06-01', '2023-06-30', tile='30SYJ')

settings = {
    's2_target_res': 10,
    'dsf_spectrum_option': 'darkest',
    'l2w_parameters': ['spm_nechad2016', 'chl_oc3', 'pSDB_green'],
}

ac_gee = ACOLITE(ac, settings)
corrected, final_settings = ac_gee.correct(images)

Requirements

• Python ≥ 3.11
• earthengine-api ≥ 0.1.350
• numpy ≥ 1.20.0
• scipy ≥ 1.7.0
• netcdf4 ≥ 1.7.0
• ACOLITE (separate installation)

Documentation

Full documentation including API reference, examples, and architecture diagrams is available at: https://aouei.github.io/gee_acolite

Water Quality Products

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please fork the repository, create a feature branch, and submit a pull request.

License

GNU General Public License v3.0 — see LICENSE for details.

Citation

If you use this package in your research, please cite:

@software{heredia_sergio_2026_gee_acolite,
  author    = {Heredia, Sergio},
  title     = {gee\_acolite},
  year      = {2026},
  version   = {1.0.1},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.18367865},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18367865}
}

And the original ACOLITE paper:

@article{vanhellemont2019,
  author  = {Vanhellemont, Quinten and Ruddick, Kevin},
  title   = {Adaptation of the dark spectrum fitting atmospheric correction for aquatic applications of the Landsat and Sentinel-2 archives},
  journal = {Remote Sensing of Environment},
  volume  = {225},
  pages   = {175--192},
  year    = {2019},
  doi     = {10.1016/j.rse.2019.03.010}
}

Acknowledgments

This package is based on the ACOLITE software developed by RBINS (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences).

Contact

• GitHub: @Aouei
• Email: sergiohercar1@gmail.com