Plotting data points onto matplotlib Basemap in Jupyter Notebook

Question

I am able to successfully create a Basemap of the US within a Jupyter Notebook complete with shapefile, coloring, and borders in Cell 4.

I am trying to plot many data points onto this Basemap with the following line in Cell 8:

m.plot(x, y, marker='o', markersize=data, color='#444444', alpha=0.8, latlon=True)

The data gets plotted, but I lose all of my Basemap's formatting and shaping. Effectively, I want Cell 8 overlayed on Cell 4. I suspect I am not plotting these shapes on the same plane.

Additionally, plt.show() gives me nothing. What am I missing?

have you run "%matplotlib inline" with your import statements in the jupyter notebook? — flyingmeatball
– flyingmeatball, Commented Sep 23, 2017 at 16:21
Yes, I have. The graphs show up in my jupyter notebook, but separately. — Alex
– Alex, Commented Sep 23, 2017 at 16:23
So, I suspect everything works fine if you put the whole code in one cell, right?! For testing it would be good to have a minimal reproducible example available. — ImportanceOfBeingErnest
– ImportanceOfBeingErnest, Commented Sep 23, 2017 at 16:35
@ImportanceOfBeingErnest True, I could have boiled the example down. Both this answer (putting it all in 1 cell) and your below answer (passing axis arguments to basemap) are great solutions. Thank you. I wonder why 1 cell works but splitting cells doesnt. Memory? — Alex
– Alex, Commented Sep 23, 2017 at 20:04
No the reason is that there is no current figure present when plotting in the new cell, such that a new figure is created. You may prevent that from happening as detailed in a new part of my answer below. — ImportanceOfBeingErnest
– ImportanceOfBeingErnest, Commented Sep 23, 2017 at 20:30

ImportanceOfBeingErnest · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-23 20:29:49Z

1

A. using a figure instance

The idea can be to explicitely specify the axes to plot to at Basemap creation.

Cell 1:

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
m = Basemap(... , ax=ax)

Cell 2: # do other stuff

Cell 3:

# plot to map:
m.plot(...)

Cell 4:

# state figure object to show figure (when inline backend is in use) 
fig

Screenshot of example:

B. let pyplot not close figures

The other option would be to let pyplot not close the figures. This is the second option from this answer: How to overlay plots from different cells?

%config InlineBackend.close_figures=False

edited Sep 23, 2017 at 20:29

answered Sep 23, 2017 at 16:56

ImportanceOfBeingErnest

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Plotting data points onto matplotlib Basemap in Jupyter Notebook

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A. using a figure instance

B. let pyplot not close figures

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A. using a figure instance

B. let pyplot not close figures

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