Troubleshooting

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Troubleshooting

Earth Engine

"Please authorize access to your Earth Engine account" or "credentials not found". You have not authenticated on this computer: earthengine authenticate in the terminal of the environment, or the Authenticate… button of QGIS (Getting started).

"Project ... is not registered" or "Caller does not have required permission to use project". The project is not registered in Earth Engine or your account has no permission on it. Check the ID (not the display name) and register it at https://code.earthengine.google.com/register.

"... needs your own Earth Engine account". Exports to Google Drive cannot be done with the shared account of MonitorEO: sign in with your account and give your project in the tool (mo.init('my-ee-project'), mo_init("my-ee-project"), --project, the Project field of QGIS, Your project (optional) in the assistant) or in the environment variable EE_PROJECT. With the shared account, the GeoTIFFs of not very large regions are downloaded to your computer (download_image, Map (GeoTIFF) with Add the layer to the map).

"cannot connect to Earth Engine with the shared account of MonitorEO". The shared account does not respond: there is no internet connection, too many connections were made from your network in an hour or the service is down. Try again later or use your account and your project. The same if a large computation fails because of the quota of the shared account, which all its users share.

"Less than 10% of your research EECUs of this month are left" or "You have spent your research EECUs of this month". With the shared account, each user has 25 EECU-h of computation per month, for research only; when they are spent, the shared account does not compute for them until the 1st of the next month. Switch to your Earth Engine account and your project (as above) (Concepts).

"this version of MonitorEO is too old for the shared account: update it". Versions before 0.3.21 cannot use the shared account: update the package (pip install -U or mo_install()) or the QGIS plugin.

"to see the EECUs spent, enable the Cloud Monitoring API" (or "it needs the roles Monitoring Viewer..."). To read the EECUs that your project spends, enable it in that project (free, at the link in the message) or ask its owner for the Monitoring Viewer role. The computations work the same without it; only the bar is missing.

"Computation timed out", "User memory limit exceeded" or "Too many concurrent aggregations". The computation is too large for an interactive request. MonitorEO already splits the time series into chunks and retries when Earth Engine asks for it, but if it persists:

• use a longer step (monthly or annual instead of daily),
• shorten the period or split the region,
• use a larger pixel (scale in time series, resolution in maps),
• or export to Google Drive, which does not have those limits.

It is slow. The first time something is computed, Earth Engine processes all the images; repeating it is much faster. Sentinel-2 and Landsat over large areas and long periods are the most expensive: for trends of many years, MODIS is usually enough.

The tile URLs of a map stop working. They expire after a few hours: ask for the map again.

Data

The NDSI comes out empty or very low; the NDWI does not see water. The snow filter removes the snow that the NDSI measures and the water filter removes the water of the NDWI, Chl-a and NDCI. Switch it off: quality={'snow': False} or {'water': False}, or the check boxes of QGIS (Concepts).

A month has a strange value. Look at n_images and n_pixels: with a single image or few valid pixels (clouds, snow) the value is not very representative. A robust metric (median) or a longer step helps.

"no protected area of WDPA". The ID does not exist or is not a WDPA SITE_ID. Look it up by name (find_protected_areas).

The trend comes out without values (n < 2) or with high p-values. At least 2 years with data are needed, and for the test to make sense, 8-10 or more. A high p-value does not prove that there is no change.

Python and MCP

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'monitoreo'. You are in another Python: activate the environment (conda activate monitoreo) or install the package in yours (Getting started).

Strange errors when importing (typing_extensions, pydantic, numpy) in the MCP. Packages installed with pip install --user in ~/.local replace those of the environment. Put PYTHONNOUSERSITE=1 in the env of the MCP server (it is already in the example configuration).

Reading regions from files or downloading GeoTIFFs fails with "No module named 'osgeo'". GDAL is missing: use the conda environment (conda install -c conda-forge gdal).

The MCP server does not appear in Claude Desktop. Check that the path in command exists (which monitoreo or where monitoreo with the environment activated), that the JSON is valid (if it is not, Claude Desktop warns when it opens: a comma is usually missing or extra) and that you have not deleted what the file already had, and quit Claude Desktop completely before opening it (macOS: Cmd+Q; Windows: ☰ > File > Exit). The server logs are in the Developer menu of Claude Desktop (on macOS, in ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp-server-monitoreo.log; on Windows, in %APPDATA%\Claude\logs\). Step by step: step-by-step installation.

The MCP does not update. It needs a connection to GitHub when it starts and the package must be installed in the environment (not a development copy). Restart the client so it starts again.

Assistant

Windows does not let you open the installer ("Windows protected your PC"). The installer is not signed: press More info and Run anyway.

macOS does not let you open the installer ("Apple could not verify..." or "from an unidentified developer"). macOS blocks unsigned programs downloaded with the browser. Install it with the Terminal command of Assistant, which is not blocked and does not ask for a password. With the zip, you have to go to System Settings > Privacy & Security and press Open Anyway, with the password of an administrator of the Mac.

The installer stops with an "ERROR: ...". It is almost always the connection: open it again, and it starts over. If it fails again, delete the MonitorEO/entorno folder of your user and open it again.

Closing the window closes the assistant. That is how it is: the window is the assistant. If it is computing, it asks first, because the computation would be lost; minimize it while you wait for a long computation.

The assistant does not open with the double click. Wait a minute: if there is a new version, it installs it first (you see the small window Updating MonitorEO…). If it does not open, its messages are in MonitorEO/assistant-output.log: attach it when you write to OBSNEV. If the computer cannot open the own window of the assistant, it opens it in the browser; on Linux, the window needs GTK or Qt.

The assistant does something strange or fails again and again. Each call of the model to a tool, with its answer or its error, is saved in MonitorEO/assistant.log: attach it when you write to OBSNEV or in an issue. What was asked (regions, dates) is recorded, not the values of the results.

The assistant does not answer a question about MonitorEO. It needs the manual, which it downloads from GitHub the first time: with a connection, ask again. If the manual does not say it, the assistant says so; the whole wiki is at https://github.com/monitoreo-obsnev/monitoreo/wiki.

The model shows as not downloaded (or says "The model ... has to be downloaded"). Press Install (or Download) in Settings: the first time it downloads about 5 GB. If the download fails, check the connection and the free disk space (at least 10 GB) and press again (the model continues where it stopped).

"Ollama does not start: see ...". The log of the engine is in ~/MonitorEO/ollama/ollama.log. If you already have the Ollama application, open it and open the assistant again: it will use it. On a system for which MonitorEO has no Ollama (e.g. Windows on ARM), install it from ollama.com.

"Ollama does not answer at http://server:11434". With an Ollama on another computer ("ollama" in ~/MonitorEO/assistant.json), check that that server is on and reachable.

"before computing with your project, sign in with your Google account...". You typed a project in Your project without signing in: press Use my Google account, or leave the project empty and press Save to compute with the shared account of MonitorEO.

"ERROR: the port 8765 is in use". Another program uses that port: start with monitoreo assistant --port 8800.

"This page is of an earlier session of the assistant". The assistant was closed or restarted: close the tab and open the assistant again (double click on MonitorEO Assistant on the Desktop or monitoreo assistant).

The map comes out gray or without the Earth Engine layer. Earth Engine maps expire after a few hours: the assistant asks for them again when you move around the map. If it is still not visible, ask for the map again. The PNOA orthophoto (Spain only) background only covers Spain: outside it, choose Sentinel-2 cloudless (EOX, whole world).

A layer cannot be read. It must have polygons and a coordinate system (the .prj of a shapefile, which goes inside the .zip). Reading layers needs GDAL: use the conda environment.

The assistant mistakes the area or the options. Look at How it is computed on the result card and ask it to repeat with the right ones (for example, the WDPA of the area you want); pressing the area in the search list avoids most of the confusion.

R

"the Python package monitoreo is not in the Python of reticulate". R is using another Python. Set RETICULATE_PYTHON to the path of the Python of the conda environment before library(monitoreo) (best in ~/.Renviron) and restart R, or install the package in the Python of reticulate with mo_install().

Searches with accents or special letters find nothing (mo_protected_areas("Doñana")). The R session is not in UTF-8 (Sys.getlocale()). R 4.2 or later on Windows and RStudio use UTF-8; in a terminal, define LANG=en_US.UTF-8.

QGIS

The plugin does not appear after installing the zip. Enable it in Plugins > Manage and Install Plugins > Installed. If it gives an error when loading, uninstall it, restart QGIS and install the zip again.

The layer is added but cannot be seen. Check that the map is centered on the region (the plugin does it when adding it) and that the layer is switched on in the layers panel. If the region is very large, it is downloaded with larger pixels; if it cannot be downloaded, the plugin adds the Earth Engine tiles, which only have colors.

Identify Features gives no values. It works with GeoTIFF layers (the normal case). Earth Engine tile layers (the fallback when the download fails) have no values: use Export to Google Drive.

The map comes out with pixels larger than those of the data. The maps of the plugin have at most 4 million pixels. For full resolution: Export to Google Drive.

QGIS closes or freezes when computing. Update the plugin to the latest version: the first versions drew the charts outside the main thread, which in QGIS 4 for macOS could close QGIS.

Another problem? Open an issue with the tool, the version (monitoreo --version or that of the plugin) and the error message.