Basemap

Any map created with the Basemap library must start with the creation of a Basemap instance

mpl_toolkits.basemap.Basemap(llcrnrlon=None, llcrnrlat=None, urcrnrlon=None, urcrnrlat=None, llcrnrx=None, llcrnry=None, urcrnrx=None, urcrnry=None, width=None, height=None, projection=”cyl”, resolution=”c”, area_thresh=None, rsphere=6370997.0, ellps=None, lat_ts=None, lat_1=None, lat_2=None, lat_0=None, lon_0=None, lon_1=None, lon_2=None, o_lon_p=None, o_lat_p=None, k_0=None, no_rot=False, suppress_ticks=True, satellite_height=35786000, boundinglat=None, fix_aspect=True, anchor=”C”, celestial=False, round=False, epsg=None, ax=None)

The class constructor has many possible arguments, and all of them are optional:

  • resolution: The resolution of the included coastlines, lakes, and so on. The options are c (crude, the default), l (low), i (intermediate), h (high), f (full) or None.

    • None option is a good one if a Shapefile will be used instead of the included files, since no data must be loaded and the performance rises a lot.

  • area_thresh: The threshold under what no coast line or lake will be drawn. Default 10000,1000,100,10,1 for resolution c, l, i, h, f.

  • rsphere: Radius of the sphere to be used in the projections. Default is 6370997 meters. If a sequence is given, the first two elements are taken as the radius of the ellipsoid.

  • ellps: An ellipsoid name, such as “WGS84”. The allowed values are defined at pyproj.pj_ellps

  • suppress_ticks: Suppress automatic drawing of axis ticks and labels in map projection coordinates

  • fix_aspect: Fix aspect ratio of plot to match aspect ratio of map projection region (default True)

  • anchor: The place in the plot where the map is anchored. Default is C, which means map is centered. Allowed values are C, SW, S, SE, E, NE, N, NW, and W

  • celestial: Use the astronomical conventions for longitude (i.e. negative longitudes to the east of 0). Default False. Implies resolution=None

  • ax: set default axes instance

Passing the bounding box

The following arguments are used to set the extent of the map.

To see some examples and explanations about setting the bounding box, take a look at the Extension section.

The first way to set the extent is by defining the map bounding box in geographical coordinates:

Argument

Description

llcrnrlon

The lower left corner geographical longitude

llcrnrlat

The lower left corner geographical latitude

urcrnrlon

The upper right corner geographical longitude

urcrnrlat

The upper right corner geographical latitude

An other option is setting the bounding box, but using the projected units:

Argument

Description

llcrnrx

The lower left corner x coordinate, in the projection units

llcrnry

The lower left corner y coordinate, in the projection units

urcrnrx

The upper right corner x coordinate, in the projection units

urcrnry

The upper right corner y coordinate, in the projection units

Finally, the last option is to set the bounding box giving the center point in geographical coordinates, and the width and height of the domain in the projection units

Argument

Description

width

The width of the map in the projection units

height

The height of the map in the projection units

lon_0

The longitude of the center of the map

lat_0

The latitude of the center of the map

Using the Basemap instance to convert units

The basemap instance can be used to calculate positions on the map and the inverse operation, converting positions on the map to geographical coordinates.

from mpl_toolkits.basemap import Basemap
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

map = Basemap(projection='aeqd', lon_0 = 10, lat_0 = 50)

print map(10, 50)
print map(20015077.3712, 20015077.3712, inverse=True)

The output will be:

(20015077.3712, 20015077.3712) (10.000000000000002, 50.000000000000014)

When inverse is False, which is its default value, the input values are a longitude and a latitude, and the output, the position of this point in the map coordinates. When inverse is set to true, the behavior is the opposite, the arguments are an x and y positions in the map coordinates, and the output is the position of this point in geographical coordinates.

Basemap object fields

When a Basemap object is created, has some fields with data:

  • Some of them contain the polygons with the resolution set with the resolution parameter. They are all matplotlib Polygon objects:

    • landpolygons

    • lakepolygons

    • boundarylons

    • coastpolygons

    • coastpolygontypes

    • coastsegs

  • Other fields give information about the used projection

    • proj4string A string that can be used with proj4 (or GDAL) to have the used projection definition

    • projection The code of the used projection, as indicated in the projection argument

    • projparams A dict with the projection parameters. The ones passed and the ones put by default by Basemap

    • rmajor The semi-major axis of the ellipsoid used with the projection

    • rminor The semi-minor axis of the ellipsoid used with the projection

    • xmax, ymax, xmin, ymin The bounding box in the projection units

    • anchor The point on the map where the axis coordinates start. By default is the center of the map, but can be changed to any corner or side

    • celestial indicates if the longitudes west of Greenwich are negative