<b>Protocol pipeline for Retrospective image analysis for long-term demography using Google Earth imagery</b>

Ecosystems are rapidly degrading. Widely used approaches to monitor ecosystems to manage them effectively are both expensive and time consuming. The recent proliferation of publicly available imagery from satellites, <b>Google Earth</b>, and citizen-science platforms holds the promise to revolutionising ecological monitoring and optimising their efficiency. However, the potential of these platforms to <b>detect species</b> and <b>track their population dynamics</b> remains under-explored. We introduce a fast, inexpensive method for retrospective image analysis combining current ground-truth data with historical RGB imagery from Google Earth to extract long-term demographic data. We apply this method to three case studies involving <b>two major Mediterranean invasive plant taxa</b> with contrasting growth forms. This dataset contains the <b>step-by-step protocol</b> to perform retrospective image analysis using Google Earth Imagery, including writen protocols, videotutorials and the data. A <b>ReadMe </b>is found in the folder explaining all folder's contents, whereas a <b>WatchMe </b>has been recorded to perform an analogous function in the Youtube playlist including all videotutorials: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_LKE-yTi9kBXfw_qDdJCQ3Sxu2fjGvDD Our pipeline opens new avenues for <b>cost-effective, large-scale demographic monitoring by retrospectively harnessing open-access imagery</b>. While demonstrated here with invasive plants, we discuss the broad applicability of our approach across taxa and ecosystems. The use of retrospective image analysis for long-term demography with Google Earth imagery has the potential to expedite conservation decisions, support effective restoration, and enable robust ecological forecasting in the Anthropocene.The repository contains 4 folders (Data, Code, Protocols and Videos), acompaigned by a<b><i> ReadMe.txt</i></b> file with further details about the contents.