Poster: PyGMT: Accessing the Generic Mapping Tools from Python

Poster presented at the AGU 2019 Fall Meeting.

Abstract

For almost 30 years, the Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) have provided the Earth, Ocean, and Planetary Sciences with an open-source toolbox for processing and visualizing spatial data (bathymetry, gravity, magnetic, earthquake focal mechanisms, and more). In many fields, GMT is the de facto standard for creating high-resolution publication quality maps, figures, and animations. Since version 5, GMT has provided a C language Application Programming Interface (API) that allows other programs to access its core functionality. We are using this bridge to develop PyGMT (www.pygmt.org; formerly GMT/Python), an open-source library that allows users of the Python programming language to leverage the almost thirty years of continuous GMT development. PyGMT is designed to integrate with the existing scientific Python ecosystem, including popular packages such as numpy, pandas, and xarray. PyGMT integrates seamlessly with the Jupyter notebook, allowing high-quality figures to be generated interactively both in a personal computer and in cloud computing environments compatible with Jupyter. We will present the design and usage of the software package, latest developments and updates, and lessons learned during its implementation.

Notes

The poster was made entirely on Inkscape. The fonts are Noto Sans and Source Code Pro.

The development of PyGMT was funded by NSF grant OCE-1558403.