Matplotlib 3.0 Cookbook

Getting ready

Typically, map data is organized and distributed in the form of shapefiles. To be able to read those files and plot the data on the map, we need the ShapeReader package, usually provided by the software used for plotting the maps, which in this case is cartopy. Source mapping data is prepared, organized, and distributed by several different entities, both commercial and open source. Cartopy primarily supports two such sources: one is available at https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/ and the other can be found at http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/wessel/gshhg/. You can refer to these sites for additional information on each package.

In this chapter, we will focus only on data provided by Natural Earth data.

For demonstration ...