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MonitorEO-OBSNEV is an open monitoring tool of Essential Biodiversity Variables based on satellite sensors and models generated by the University of Granada. It enables citizens, managers, and scientists to create maps and graphs of key ecosystem metrics to support decision-making.

This wiki is the manual of the MonitorEO tools: the Earth Engine app, QGIS, Python, R and language models (MCP), with step-by-step examples.

Which tool do I use?

I want to...	Tool	Manual
See maps, time series and trends in the browser, without installing anything or having an Earth Engine account	Earth Engine app	Earth Engine app
Make maps, time series and trends without programming, next to my own layers	QGIS plugin	QGIS plugin
Ask in natural language ("has the NDVI of Doñana changed in summer?")	MCP server, with Claude or another model	MCP server
Ask for computations in natural language without Claude, with an open model on my computer, and gather them in a PDF report, without interpretation	Assistant for managers (uses the MCP server)	Assistant
Automate analyses in scripts or notebooks	Python package	Python package
Run computations from the terminal	Command line (comes with the Python package)	Command line
Work in R with sf, terra, ggplot2 or rgee	R package	R package
Publish results so anyone can see them, without an account	Results viewer (administrators)	Results viewer

They all use the same functions of the Python package monitoreo (the Earth Engine app is its translation to JavaScript): the same computation gives the same result in all of them. Everything is computed in Google Earth Engine with the account of each user (the app, with that of MonitorEO), with no server of our own and at no cost for non-commercial use.

What you can do

On a protected area, an ecoregion, a rectangle, a point or your own layers, with the satellite variables of the MonitorEO catalog (NDVI, EVI, LAI, NDWI, LSWI, NDSI, chlorophyll, surface temperature, evapotranspiration, albedo, aerosols...) from Sentinel-2, Landsat and MODIS:

Time series: one value per day, 16 days, month or year, as a table, CSV and chart.	Maps of the variable summarized over time, as tiles or GeoTIFF with values.
Seasonal trends (Mann-Kendall and Sen's slope) of each month, 16 days or year.	Comparison of two periods, as a chart and as a map of differences.

And also: burn severity of fires (dNBR with the USGS classes), statistics of a map in each polygon, GeoTIFF downloads (one variable, or a recipe of several on aligned grids, for models), and exports of large maps and time series to Google Drive.

Where to start

1. To try it without installing anything: the Earth Engine app.
2. Getting started: the installation of each tool and, if you want, your Earth Engine account (without it, MonitorEO computes with its shared account). If you have never used Python or a terminal, the QGIS plugin needs nothing else, and to use MonitorEO with Claude there is the step-by-step installation.
3. Concepts: variables, regions, periods, metrics, filters, trends and comparisons. It is common to all the tools.
4. The manual of your tool: Earth Engine app, QGIS plugin, MCP server (and the assistant for managers), Python package (and Command line) or R package.
5. If something fails: Troubleshooting.

The code is in the repository (how it is organized, tested and published: Development); questions and bugs go to its issues.

How to cite

If you use MonitorEO in your work, cite it with its Zenodo DOI, which always leads to the latest version:

Observatorio de Cambio Global de Sierra Nevada (2026). MonitorEO [Software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23814894

Each version also has its own DOI, on its Zenodo page, to cite exactly the one you used. The repository gives the citation in APA and BibTeX in "Cite this repository". The tools give the same citation: monitoreo about, the about tool of the MCP server, mo_about() and citation("monitoreo") in R, "About MonitorEO" in the QGIS plugin and in the Earth Engine app, and the footer of the results viewer. The reports of the results viewer are cited separately: each one says how.

Acknowledgements

MonitorEO is an output of the EVEREST Project (PID2023-151939OB-I00), funded by MICIU/AEI 10.13039/501100011033, and co-funded by ERDF – European Union, as well as of the NevadEO Project (C-EXP-074-UGR23), co-funded by the ERDF 2014-2020 Program and the Regional Ministry of Economy, Knowledge, Enterprise, and Universities of the Regional Government of Andalusia. It is also an output of the PRESINMED Project (Preserving the singularity of Mediterranean high-mountain biodiversity hotspots: a NBS approach, PCI 2025-163175) of the Biodiversa+ NBS 2023 call.

The logos of the funding bodies are at the foot of each page.

License

Copyright (C) 2026 OBSNEV, Universidad de Granada. GNU General Public License v3.0 or later: it can be used, modified and redistributed, also for commercial purposes, keeping the copyright notices and under the same license (details in Development).