Plotting data on a map using Basemap

Probably the best geospatial visualizations are done by overlaying the data over the map. Whether the whole globe, a continent, a state, or even the sky, it is one of the easiest ways for a viewer to comprehend the relation between the data and geography it has displayed.

In this recipe we will be learning how to project data on a map using matplotlib's Basemap toolkit.

Getting ready

As we are already familiar with matplotlib as our plotting engine, we can extend that to matplotlib's capabilities to use other toolkits, one such example being the Basemap mapping toolkit.

Basemap itself doesn't do any plotting. It just transforms given geospatial coordinates to map projection and gives that data to matplotlib for plotting.

First, we need to install the Basemap toolkit. If you are using EPD, Basemap is already installed. If you are on Linux, it is best to use native package managers to install the package containing Basemap. On Ubuntu, for example, the package...