Foundation-Model Embeddings for Land-Cover Mapping and Annual Change Detection in a Hyper-Arid Region: A Case Study of Saudi Arabia (2017–2024)
Spectral remote sensing struggles in hyper-arid environments because desert substrates share overlapping optical signatures. We evaluate AlphaEarth foundation-model embeddings—64-dimensional annual representations fused from Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Landsat, and LiDAR—for land-cover classification and change detection a...