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Figure 6: GeoPandas / spatial data - choropleth map - area with rivers and cities of the states of the USA#6

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Figure 6: GeoPandas / spatial data - choropleth map - area with rivers and cities of the states of the USA#6
seisman merged 81 commits into
mainfrom
fig/geopandas

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@yvonnefroehlich

@yvonnefroehlich yvonnefroehlich commented Dec 24, 2024

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This PR adds a JN for GeoPandas - spatial data - GeoDataFrame:

  • point geometry - cities
  • line geometry - rivers
  • polygon geometry - population

Preview:
image

@gitnotebooks

gitnotebooks Bot commented Dec 24, 2024

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Found 1 changed notebook. Review the changes at https://app.gitnotebooks.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt-paper-figures/pull/6

@seisman seisman changed the title Figure XY: GeoPandas Figure 6: GeoPandas Oct 17, 2025
@seisman seisman changed the title Figure 6: GeoPandas Figure 6: GeoPandas7 Oct 17, 2025
@seisman seisman changed the title Figure 6: GeoPandas7 Figure 7: GeoPandas Oct 17, 2025
@seisman seisman mentioned this pull request Nov 7, 2025
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@seisman

seisman commented Nov 7, 2025

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I'm unsure if we need this example. As I understand it, PyGMT can plot GeoPandas objects, but its functionality for processing them is limited since the aspatial metadata will be lost during processing.

@yvonnefroehlich

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I'm unsure if we need this example. As I understand it, PyGMT can plot GeoPandas objects, but its functionality for processing them is limited since the aspatial metadata will be lost during processing.

I think the idea of having a choropleth map is, to show that there is functionality extending the feature available in GMT.

@seisman

seisman commented Nov 19, 2025

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This example highlights GeoPandas integration in PyGMT. A geopandas.GeoDataFrame may contain any of the standard geometry types: Point, LineString, MultiLineString, Polygon, and MultiPolygon.

The script below plots three different datasets (available from https://www.naturalearthdata.com/) with different geometrie.

  • world — country boundaries represented by Polygon and MultiPolygon geometries
  • rivers — major rivers represented by LineString geometries
  • cities — populated places represented by Point geometries

So, only MultiLineString is not covered.

import pygmt
import geopandas as gpd

world = gpd.read_file("https://naciscdn.org/naturalearth/50m/cultural/ne_50m_admin_0_countries.zip")
rivers = gpd.read_file("https://naciscdn.org/naturalearth/110m/physical/ne_110m_rivers_lake_centerlines.zip")  
cities = gpd.read_file("https://naciscdn.org/naturalearth/110m/cultural/ne_110m_populated_places_simple.zip")

world["POP_EST"] *= 1.0e-5

fig = pygmt.Figure()
fig.basemap(region="=SA", projection="M15c", frame=True)
fig.plot(data=world, pen="0.5p,black", fill="lightgreen")
pygmt.makecpt(cmap="turbo", series=(0, 3000, 100))
fig.plot(
    data=world,
    pen="0.2p,gray10",
    fill="+z",
    cmap=True,
    aspatial="Z=POP_EST",
)
fig.colorbar(frame=True)
fig.plot(data=rivers, pen="1p,blue")
fig.plot(data=cities, style="c0.1c", fill="red", pen="black")
fig.text(x=cities.geometry.x, y=cities.geometry.y, text=cities["name"], font="10p,Helvetica-Bold,black", offset="0.2c/0.2c")
fig.show()
map

@yvonnefroehlich

yvonnefroehlich commented Nov 19, 2025

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Your example looks quite promising, but I get the following error when running the code:

UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode characters in position 0-7: character maps to
encoding with 'cp1252' codec failed

Will look it in detail tomorrow or within the next days.

@seisman seisman changed the title Figure 7: GeoPandas Figure 6: GeoPandas Nov 20, 2025
@seisman

seisman commented Nov 20, 2025

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It's likely because the city names contain non-ASCII characters, which doesn't work well in your console.

This is a likely solution for you:

cities["name"] = cities["name"].apply(lambda x: x.encode("utf-8", errors="ignore").decode("utf-8"))

@yvonnefroehlich

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It's likely because the city names contain non-ASCII characters, which doesn't work well in your console.

This is a likely solution for you:

cities["name"] = cities["name"].apply(lambda x: x.encode("utf-8", errors="ignore").decode("utf-8"))

Oh, thanks! I already tried something similar, but it did solve the problem yet. For now, I focus on the geometry column of the dataframe, then the codes work.

@yvonnefroehlich

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Using region="=SA" shows that country codes are supported. But the overlapping labels for the cities between 5°-25° North do not look nice.

region="SA" region=[-89, -33, -56.5, 9.7]
Fig7_PyGMT_geopandas_completregion Fig7_PyGMT_geopandas_smallerregion

Comment thread Fig7_PyGMT_geopandas.py Outdated
Comment thread Fig7_PyGMT_geopandas.py Outdated
Comment thread Fig7_PyGMT_geopandas.py Outdated
@seisman

seisman commented Nov 21, 2025

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What about Africa? Squares are populated cities, while only "worldcity" (city with global significance) are labelled.

Fig7_PyGMT_geopandas_ne
import pygmt
import geopandas as gpd

world = gpd.read_file("https://naciscdn.org/naturalearth/50m/cultural/ne_50m_admin_0_countries.zip")
rivers = gpd.read_file("https://naciscdn.org/naturalearth/110m/physical/ne_110m_rivers_lake_centerlines.zip")
cities = gpd.read_file("https://naciscdn.org/naturalearth/110m/cultural/ne_110m_populated_places_simple.zip")
world["POP_EST"] *= 1.0e-6

fig = pygmt.Figure()
fig.basemap(region="=AF", projection="Q15c", frame=True)
pygmt.makecpt(cmap="batlow", series=(0, 270, 100)) 
fig.plot(
    data=world[["POP_EST", "geometry"]],
    pen="1p,gray50",
    fill="+z",
    cmap=True,
    aspatial="Z=POP_EST",
)
fig.colorbar(frame="x+lPopulation (millions)")
fig.plot(data=rivers["geometry"], pen="0.5p,skyblue")
fig.plot(data=cities["geometry"], style="s0.3c", fill="red", pen="1p,black")

mask = cities.worldcity == 1
fig.text(
    x=cities[mask].geometry.x,
    y=cities[mask].geometry.y,
    text=cities[mask]["name"],
    font="10p,Helvetica-Bold,black",
    offset="0c/-0.3c",
    justify="TR",
    fill="white@30",
)
fig.show()
fig.savefig(fname="Fig7_PyGMT_geopandas_ne.pdf")

Comment thread Fig6_PyGMT_geopandas.py Outdated
@yvonnefroehlich

yvonnefroehlich commented Dec 2, 2025

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Really like the right Chicago example, including lake etc.

Thanks! Also like this map. But Natural Earth does not provide such detailed data of Chicago which can be used for the choropleth part. If we want to have the same datasource for all datasets, we probably will go with the USA example showing the area of the different states with rivers and cities. Now need to think about Alaska. It looks a bit strange when just plotting it together with the rest of the USA. Sometimes Alaska is placed seperatly as an inset; maybe we can do this? Edit: See review by Dongdong #6 (comment) .

Comment thread Fig6_PyGMT_geopandas.py Outdated
Comment on lines +36 to +47
# Add Alaska and Hawaii separately in the lower left corner
for xshift, region in zip(["0.9c", "2.3c"], [[172, 230, 51, 72], [-168, -154, 18, 29]]):
with fig.shift_origin(xshift=xshift):
fig.plot(
data=states,
region=region,
projection="M2.5c",
cmap=True,
pen="0.2p,gray50",
fill="+z",
aspatial="Z=area_sqkm"
)

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Depending on how we describe this figure in the manuscript, maybe it makes sense to move the code for insets up to the code part for plotting the polygons of the main map (currently line 18).

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That would change the region and projection settings and we have to set region and projection again when plotting rivers and cities.

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Yes, that's true. We do not use Figure.inset here.

Comment thread Fig6_PyGMT_geopandas.py Outdated
Comment thread Fig6_PyGMT_geopandas.py Outdated
fig = pygmt.Figure()
fig.basemap(projection="L-96/35/33/41/12c", region=[-126, -66, 25, 49], frame="+n")

pygmt.makecpt(cmap="bilbao", series=[0, states["area_sqkm"].max()])

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Maybe use a different CPT or a different range, to avoid polygons that are too light or too dark?

@yvonnefroehlich yvonnefroehlich Dec 2, 2025

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Actually not so easy, as Alaska is so much larger and Hawaii so much smaller than the other states.

hawaii nuuk imola bamako
hawaii nuuk imola bamako
acton batlow navia bilbao (currently)
acton batlow navia image

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Maybe "hawaii" is better?

@yvonnefroehlich yvonnefroehlich Dec 3, 2025

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Yes, from the CPTs I tested I think "hawaii" is the best (even I am not really a fan of the colors in this colormap itself).
I have chaged the colormap in commit e1121f2. Also played around with a logarithmic scaling, but did not improve the image.

Co-authored-by: Dongdong Tian <seisman.info@gmail.com>
Comment thread Fig6_PyGMT_geopandas.py Outdated
Comment thread Fig6_PyGMT_geopandas.py Outdated
@yvonnefroehlich

yvonnefroehlich commented Dec 3, 2025

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Just want to let you know, I am considering adding the code for the Chicago map to my personal map repo (please see yvonnefroehlich/gmt-pygmt-plotting#131). As this example relies on a mixture of data sources and uses the geodatasets, I think we will not consider it for the paper or for a tutorial on GeoPandas geometries. So hope this is fine for everybody.

Co-authored-by: Dongdong Tian <seisman.info@gmail.com>

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This PR looks good to me.

@seisman

seisman commented Dec 4, 2025

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@yvonnefroehlich If you feel this example is good, please copy the codes to Notebook, remove the Python script, output image, then we should be able to merge this PR.

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3 participants