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

Product	Description
spm_nechad2016	Suspended particulate matter — 665 nm (Nechad 2016)
spm_nechad2016_704	SPM — 704 nm
spm_nechad2016_740	SPM — 740 nm
tur_nechad2016	Turbidity — 665 nm (Nechad 2016)
chl_oc2	Chlorophyll-a OC2
chl_oc3	Chlorophyll-a OC3
chl_re_mishra	Chlorophyll-a NDCI (Mishra)
pSDB_green	Pseudo satellite-derived bathymetry — green
pSDB_red	Pseudo satellite-derived bathymetry — red
Rrs_B*	Remote sensing reflectance (all 13 bands)

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).

This software was developed at the Institute of Marine Sciences of Andalusia (ICMAN-CSIC), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Puerto Real, Spain.

Contact

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