Overlaying a TIF on basemap

Q&A PyGMT Q&A
1

Dear PyGMT Community,

I have been working on visualizing land subsidence results from Sentinel 1 SLC data using PyGMT. Specifically, I have a single-band TIF file representing subsidence, and I’m trying to overlay it on a basemap. While I have attempted this using the following code


minlon, maxlon = 67.75, 68.40

minlat, maxlat = 25.33, 26.10

fig = pygmt.Figure()

fig.basemap(region=[minlon, maxlon, minlat, maxlat], projection="M6i", frame=True)

fig.grdimage("@earth_relief_30m", shading=True, cmap="gray")

grid = "deform_in_mm.tif"

fig.grdimage(grid, cmap="jet", shading=True, frame=True)

fig.colorbar(frame=["x+lDeformation (mm)", "y+lmm"])

fig.savefig("surface_deformation.png", dpi=300)

fig.show()

I am not entirely satisfied with the visualization. The background doesn’t look as polished as I would like. Could anyone provide suggestions please on how to enhance the visualization and make the background more appealing?
Any guidance or tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

2

I think it would be more beneficial to share the current look of your plot, as it allows the community to assist you more effectively.

1 Like
3

Hello @IamTariqAshraf,

Welcome to the GMT forum :slightly_smiling_face:!

Maybe using a higher resolution of the earth_relief grid helps you:

import pygmt

minlon, maxlon = 67.75, 68.40
minlat, maxlat = 25.33, 26.10

# Test different resolution: 30 arc-minutes, 1 arc-minute, 1 arc-second
for resolution in ["30m", "01m", "01s"]:
    
    fig = pygmt.Figure()
    fig.basemap(region=[minlon, maxlon, minlat, maxlat], projection="M6i", frame=True)
    
    fig.grdimage("@earth_relief_" + resolution, shading=True, cmap="gray")
    
    fig.show()

Output figures
30m

surface_deformation_30m
surface_deformation_30m1334×1627 17 KB

01m
surface_deformation_01m
surface_deformation_01m1334×1627 25.1 KB

01s
surface_deformation_01s
surface_deformation_01s667×814 272 KB

1 Like
4

Thanks for responding. I’ll keep that in mind while asking any question in future.

5

I am grateful for your kindness and generosity in sharing your knowledge with others. Your contribution not only solved my problem but also inspired me to continue exploring and learning more about PyGMT.