Making nice maps for posters with Python πŸ—ΊοΈ+🐍¢

To communicate your results effectively to people πŸ§‘β€πŸ€β€πŸ§‘, you may come to a point where making maps are needed.

These maps could be created for a conference poster, a presentation, or even for a social media 🐦 post!

In this tutorial πŸ§‘β€πŸ«, we’ll focus on making basic 2D maps, and by the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

  • Set up basic map elements - basemap, overview map, title and axis annotations 🌐

  • Plot raster data (images/grids) and choose a Scientific Colour Map 🌈

  • Plot vector data (points/lines/polygons) with different styles πŸ— 

  • Save and export your map into a suitable format for your audience 😎

πŸŽ‰ Getting startedΒΆ

Once you have an idea for what to map, you will need a way to draw it πŸ–ŒοΈ.

There are plenty of ways to make maps πŸ—Ύ, from pen and paper to Photoshop.

We’ll start by loading some of these tools, that help us to process and visualize our data πŸ“Š.

import icepyx as ipx  # for downloading and loading ICESat-2 data
import pygmt  # for making geographical maps and figures
import rioxarray  # for performing geospatial operations like reprojection
import xarray as xr  # for working with n-dimensional data