Metadata Catalogue Metadata Catalogue https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu/ https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu//srv/eng/portal.opensearch https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu//srv/eng/rdf.search?any= eng Continents, countries, sea regions of the world. https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu//srv/eng/thesaurus.download?ref=external.place.regions ecoportal.fos_1.rdf https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu//srv/eng/thesaurus.download?ref=external.ecoportal.fos application/xml XML text/html HTML b0cde5a8-5d07-44c2-9293-cb1316dfd76a Alvar: Ailanthus altissima visual aid for reconnaissance Alvar is a Google Earth Engine cloud application for early reconnaissance of Ailanthus altissima. Alvar is based on Copernicus Sentinel-2 optical imagery at 10m ground pixel resolution. The service rationale is that each plant species shows peculiar signals in the optical range and, possibly, time-series signatures. Hence, recognising the invasive alien species A. altissima is in principle feasible, given a characteristic optical spatiotemporal signature. However, even if we can have physiological clues, we do not know such a signature. Alvar supports the search and reconnaissance of A. altissima optical signature exploiting the cloud computing capability of fast time series search of the images and the vegetation-related associated optical indices, without the need for local data download. Alvar exploits the machine learning algorithms exposed by the Google Earth Engine APIs and trains them by means of a user-provided training/control set of empirical observations. The user interface is GUI-based and the intervention on the code consists only in importing the appropriate training set and tuning the area of interest bounding box accordingly. e-Service invasive alien species identification Sentinel-2 cloud computing environmental monitoring habitat mapping remote sensing URL https://code.earthengine.google.com/baf3e4144da52ed4e372f6991ca17bf6 DOI https://doi.org/10.48372/w78z-7c80 license Users must be logged as Google developers in order to use the application. National Research Council (CNR), Research Institute on Terrestrial Ecosystems (IRET) Marco Ciolfi