Overview

About

PyGMT is a Python wrapper for the Generic Mapping Tools (GMT), a command-line program widely used across the Earth, Ocean, and Planetary sciences and beyond. It provides capabilities for processing spatial data (gridding, filtering, masking, FFTs, etc) and making high quality plots and maps.

PyGMT is different from Python libraries like Bokeh and Matplotlib, which have a larger focus on interactivity and allowing different backends. GMT uses the PostScript format to generate high quality (static) vector graphics for publications, posters, talks, etc. It is memory efficient and very fast. The PostScript figures can be converted to other formats like PDF, PNG, and JPG for use on the web and elsewhere. In fact, PyGMT users will usually not have any contact with the original PostScript files and get only the more convenient formats like PDF and PNG.

The project was started in 2017 by Leonardo Uieda and Paul Wessel (the co-creator and main developer of GMT) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. The development of PyGMT has been supported by NSF grants OCE-1558403 and EAR-1948602.

We welcome any feedback and ideas! Let us know by submitting issues on GitHub or by posting on our Discourse forum.

Presentations

These are conference presentations about the development of PyGMT (previously “GMT/Python”):

• “Accessing and Integrating GMT with Python and the Scientific Python Ecosystem”. 2024. Yvonne Fröhlich, Dongdong Tian, Wei Ji Leong, Max Jones, and Michael Grund. Presented at AGU 2024. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.28049495

  

• “Geospatial Analysis & Visualization with PyGMT”. 2022. Max Jones, Wei Ji Leong, and Leonardo Uieda. Presented at SciPy 2022. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.20483793

  

• “PyGMT: Accessing the Generic Mapping Tools from Python”. 2019. Leonardo Uieda and Paul Wessel. Presented at AGU 2019. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.11320280

  

• “Building an object-oriented Python interface for the Generic Mapping Tools”. 2018. Leonardo Uieda and Paul Wessel. Presented at SciPy 2018. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.6814052

  

• “Integrating the Generic Mapping Tools with the Scientific Python Ecosystem”. 2018. Leonardo Uieda and Paul Wessel. Presented at AOGS Annual Meeting 2018. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.6399944

  

• “Bringing the Generic Mapping Tools to Python”. 2017. Leonardo Uieda and Paul Wessel. Presented at SciPy 2017. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.7635833

  

• “A modern Python interface for the Generic Mapping Tools”. 2017. Leonardo Uieda and Paul Wessel. Presented at AGU 2017. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.5662411