Removing overlapped buffers using Google Earth Engine

Question

I have a line split up into line segments, with each segment having a buffer around that. I’m trying to remove where they overlap (basically where the darker circles are within the line buffer itself), so that when I later mask by buffer it doesn’t have duplicated results.

Anyone know how to remove those overlaps (and ideally keep the land they covered still within ONE buffered area)?

var lines = ee.FeatureCollection(
linetosplit.cutLines(ee.List.sequence(0, linetosplit.length(), 9000))
.geometries()
.map(function (geometry) { return ee.Feature(ee.Geometry(geometry)); 
}));

var buffered = lines.map(function (feature) {
return feature.buffer(2000);
 });


Map.addLayer(buffered);

print(buffered)

Link to code: https://code.earthengine.google.com/b6b989b9d0bed22a8882f95bd68d0d4d

Answer 1

You can first extract the individual features from the feature collection and find the intersections between them using:

//extract individual features
var f0 = buffered.filter(ee.Filter.eq("system:index", '0'));
var f1 = buffered.filter(ee.Filter.eq("system:index", '1'));
var f2 = buffered.filter(ee.Filter.eq("system:index", '2'));
var f3 = buffered.filter(ee.Filter.eq("system:index", '3'));
var f4 = buffered.filter(ee.Filter.eq("system:index", '4'));
var f5 = buffered.filter(ee.Filter.eq("system:index", '5'));
//compute spatial intersections between features  
var int1 = f0.geometry().intersection(f1.geometry());
var int2 = f1.geometry().intersection(f2.geometry());
var int3 = f2.geometry().intersection(f3.geometry());
var int4 = f3.geometry().intersection(f4.geometry());
var int5 = f4.geometry().intersection(f5.geometry());

Then, you combine the intersections into a Multipolygon and compute the spatial difference using:

//combine intersections and plot
var intersections = ee.Geometry.MultiPolygon([int1, int2, int3, int4, int5]);
Map.addLayer(intersections, {color: 'FFFF00'}, 'intersections');
//compute difference and plot
var difference = buffered.geometry().difference(intersections)
Map.addLayer(difference, {color: '#24f8ff'}, 'difference');

FULL SCRIPT HERE