Google Earth Engine Script for Creating Study Areas around Protected Areas in Ethiopia (BMNP & YWS)

This Earth Engine script creates spatial layers for a counterfactual design used to evaluate the effects of nature-based solutions (NbS) in Bale Mountains National Park (BMNP) and Yabello Wildlife Sanctuary (YWS), Ethiopia. The procedure: Loads WDPA protected area boundaries filtered for Ethiopia. Identifies BMNP and YWS as core NbS intervention zones. Creates 15 km buffer zones around each site. Defines study areas by subtracting the core protected areas from the buffers, representing adjacent heavy-grazing (non-NbS) control zones. Visualizes all layers. Exports core, buffer, and counterfactual zones as shapefiles. These layers support a spatial buffer-based counterfactual evaluation framework for drought mitigation analysis (see Retallack et al., 2024).