Plotting geospatial data

Week 5 - Discussion section

In this discussion section you will wrangle data about earthquakes and practice:

Setup

  1. Access the workbench-1 server.

  2. Create a new Python notebook inside your eds-220-sections directory and rename it to section-5-earthquakes.ipynb.

  3. Use the terminal to push this file to your remote repository.

General directions

  • Add comments as appropriate along your code following the course commenting standards.
  • Include markdown cells in between your code cells to add titles and information to each exercise
  • Commit every time you finish a major step. Remember to write informative commits in the imperative mood.

About the data

For this task you will use two datasets.

The first dataset is simplified data from the USGS Earthquakes Database. This data is in tabular format and has the following columns:

Column Description
time date and time of event (all events from 2014)
latitude decimal degrees [-90,90]
longitude decimal degrees [-360,360]
depth depth of the event (km)
mag magnitude of event
id event identifier
place where the event took place
type type of event

This is the same dataset you used in assginment 1. You can access the data through this link.

Further information about the dataset can be accessed in the ANSS Comprehensive Earthquake Catalog (ComCat) Documentation.

The second dataset is Natural Earth’s low resolution cultural boundaries data. These are useful to make maps of the whole world, although might not be suitable for mapping individual nations or finer geospatial analysis. You can access the “Admin 0 – Countries” dataset available in this link.

1. Brainstorm

In this session you will recreate the following map:

  1. Individually, write down high-level steps on how you would explore and wrangle the data to produce this map. Do not code anything yet.

  2. Discuss your high-level steps with your team. What do you see as potential challenges to implementing your plan?

  3. As a team, select an initial plan for recreating this plot.

2. Create the plot

Use your plan as a starting point to recreate the plot.

  • You may (or not) need to look online to carry out some of the steps in your plan. It is completely fine to seek help online! Resourceful troubleshooting is a key skill in data science.

  • It’s ok if your initial plan changes as you work with the data and discuss challenges with your team! This brainstorm is to create a shared starting point.

Don’t forget to write informative commits in the imperative every time you finish a major step.

3. Update your notebook

  1. nclude any takeaways from the map in a markdown cell after your plot.

  2. Go over your notebook and add markdown cells with appropriate titles and subtitles to guide the reader through the different steps in your workflow.

  3. Include a markdown cell at the top with a title for your notebook and a description of what it is about.