Statistics of an Image Region

Suppose there is need to calculate statistics over a region (or regions) of an ee.Image. To get statistics of pixel values in an image region, use image.reduceRegion(). This reduces all the pixels in the region(s) to a statistic or other compact representation of the pixel data in the region (e.g. histogram). The region is represented as a Geometry, which might be a polygon, containing many pixels, or it might be a single point, in which case there will only be one pixel in the region. In either case, as illustrated in Figure 1, the output is a statistic derived from the pixels in the region.

reduceRegion diagram
Figure 1. An illustration of an ee.Reducer applied to an image and a region.

For an example of getting pixel statistics in a region of an image using reduceRegion(), consider finding the mean spectral values of a 5-year Landsat composite within the boundaries of the Sierra Nevada Coniferous Forest (illustrated by Figure 2):

// Load input imagery: Landsat 7 5-year composite.
var image = ee.Image('LANDSAT/LE7_TOA_5YEAR/2008_2012');

// Load an input region: Sierra Nevada mixed conifer forest.
var region = ee.Feature(ee.FeatureCollection(
  .filter(ee.Filter.eq('G200_REGIO', 'Sierra Nevada Coniferous Forests'))

// Reduce the region. The region parameter is the Feature geometry.
var meanDictionary = image.reduceRegion({
  reducer: ee.Reducer.mean(),
  geometry: region.geometry(),
  scale: 30,
  maxPixels: 1e9

// The result is a Dictionary.  Print it.

To force the computation, it suffices to print the result, which the Code Editor will display as a Dictionary in the console. The output should look something like:

B1: 24.424852649140902
B2: 22.57742821456443
B3: 20.920102466922316
B4: 53.67923755073888
B5: 34.62846572947724
B6_VCID_2: 198.17178396915844
B7: 21.361510886878047
reduceRegion diagram
Figure 2. False color composite of the Landsat image data, clipped to California and Nevada. The region over which to reduce is shown in white.

Note that in this example the reduction is specified by providing the reducer (ee.Reducer.mean()), the geometry (region.geometry()), the scale (30 meters) and maxPixels for the maximum number of pixels to input to the reducer. A scale should always be specified in reduceRegion() calls. This is because in complex processing flows, which may involve data from different sources with different scales, the scale of the output will not be unambiguously determined from the inputs. In that case, the scale defaults to 1 degree, which generally produces unsatisfactory results. See this page for more information about how Earth Engine handles scale.

There are two ways to set the scale: by specifying the scale parameter, or by specifying a CRS and CRS transform. (See the glossary for more information about CRS's and CRS transforms). For example, the meanDictionary reduction (above) is equivalent to the following:

// As an alternative to specifying scale, specify a CRS and a CRS transform.
// Make this array by constructing a 4326 projection at 30 meters,
// then copying the bounds of the composite, from composite.projection().
var affine = [0.00026949458523585647, 0, -180, 0, -0.00026949458523585647, 86.0000269494563];

// Perform the reduction, print the result.
  reducer: ee.Reducer.mean(),
  geometry: region.geometry(),
  crs: 'EPSG:4326',
  crsTransform: affine,
  maxPixels: 1e9

In general, specifying the scale is sufficient and results in more readable code. Earth Engine determines which pixels to input to the reducer by first rasterizing the region. If a scale is specified without a CRS, the region is rasterized in the image's native projection scaled to the specified resolution. If both a CRS and scale are specified, the region is rasterized based on them. Pixels are ‘in’ the region if their centroid is covered by the region at the specified scale and projection.

The maxPixels parameter is needed to get the computation to succeed. If this parameter is left out of the example, an error is returned, which looks something like:

There are multiple options to get past these errors: increase maxPixels, as in the example, increase the scale, or set bestEffort to true, which automatically computes a new (larger) scale such that maxPixels is not exceeded. If you do not specify maxPixels, the default value is used.

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