ee.Geometry.Polygon.geodesic

  • The geodesic() method determines whether polygon edges are rendered as straight lines or curved to follow the Earth's curvature.

  • When set to false, edges appear straight in the projection; when true, edges are curved, representing the shortest path on the Earth's surface.

  • This method applies to Polygon geometries and returns a boolean value indicating the geodesic setting.

  • You can use this method to visually represent and accurately measure distances on a geographic scale.

 If false, edges are straight in the projection. If true, edges are curved to follow the shortest path on the surface of the Earth.

UsageReturns
Polygon.geodesic()Boolean
ArgumentTypeDetails
this: geometryGeometry

Examples

Code Editor (JavaScript)

// Define a Polygon object.
var polygon = ee.Geometry.Polygon(
    [[[-122.092, 37.424],
      [-122.086, 37.418],
      [-122.079, 37.425],
      [-122.085, 37.423]]]);

// Apply the geodesic method to the Polygon object.
var polygonGeodesic = polygon.geodesic();

// Print the result to the console.
print('polygon.geodesic(...) =', polygonGeodesic);

// Display relevant geometries on the map.
Map.setCenter(-122.085, 37.422, 15);
Map.addLayer(polygon,
             {'color': 'black'},
             'Geometry [black]: polygon');

Python setup

See the Python Environment page for information on the Python API and using geemap for interactive development.

import ee
import geemap.core as geemap

Colab (Python)

# Define a Polygon object.
polygon = ee.Geometry.Polygon([[
    [-122.092, 37.424],
    [-122.086, 37.418],
    [-122.079, 37.425],
    [-122.085, 37.423],
]])

# Apply the geodesic method to the Polygon object.
polygon_geodesic = polygon.geodesic()

# Print the result.
display('polygon.geodesic(...) =', polygon_geodesic)

# Display relevant geometries on the map.
m = geemap.Map()
m.set_center(-122.085, 37.422, 15)
m.add_layer(polygon, {'color': 'black'}, 'Geometry [black]: polygon')
m