Hiking Map Plots

This repository contains code to plot hikes (GPX traces) onto maps.

Prepare required data

Height map data

I am using the GMTED2010 data, which is kindly provided by USGS. This dataset contains elevation data every 7.5 arc-seconds. That is a resolution of around 200m (depending on where you are on the globe).

The next steps contain information on how to download this for the larger part of Europe, adjust to your needs:

cd topo-land
wget https://edcintl.cr.usgs.gov/downloads/sciweb1/shared/topo/downloads/GMTED/Global_tiles_GMTED/075darcsec/mea/E000/30N000E_20101117_gmted_mea075.tif
wget https://edcintl.cr.usgs.gov/downloads/sciweb1/shared/topo/downloads/GMTED/Global_tiles_GMTED/075darcsec/mea/E000/50N000E_20101117_gmted_mea075.tif
wget https://edcintl.cr.usgs.gov/downloads/sciweb1/shared/topo/downloads/GMTED/Global_tiles_GMTED/075darcsec/mea/W030/30N030W_20101117_gmted_mea075.tif
wget https://edcintl.cr.usgs.gov/downloads/sciweb1/shared/topo/downloads/GMTED/Global_tiles_GMTED/075darcsec/mea/W030/50N030W_20101117_gmted_mea075.tif
cd ..
# merge into a single file
python -m hikingplots.tools.merge_tif topo-land/30N000E_20101117_gmted_mea075.tif topo-land/50N000E_20101117_gmted_mea075.tif topo-land/30N030W_20101117_gmted_mea075.tif topo-land/50N030W_20101117_gmted_mea075.tif topo-land/merged.tif

Hydrological data

I am using the EU-Hydro – River Network Database, Version 1.3, which is kindly provided by European Environment Agency (EEA). Download the full dataset and extract it. The following scripts should help with that.

The next steps assume that you have downloaded the file EU_hydro_gpkg_eu.zip into the topo-water folder. Then run

unzip topo-water/EU_hydro_gpkg_eu.zip -d topo-water/EU_hydro_gpkg_eu
find topo-water/EU_hydro_gpkg_eu -name "euhydro_*_v013_GPKG.zip" | xargs -n1 unzip -d topo-water/EU_hydro_gpkg_eu
rm topo-water/EU_hydro_gpkg_eu/euhydro_*_v013_GPKG.zip

Hiking tracks

The folder example-tracks contains examples of how the folder structure should look like. What matters is that there is a separate subfolder per track that contains a *.gpx file (the exact file name does not matter).

Plot several tracks onto a single map

This is meant to plot several tracks over a larger area, as the resolution of the height map dataset is too limited for plotting individual tracks.

The following script plots all example tracks, which are distributed over a larger part of the alps.

python -m hikingplots.plot.main plot-area \
    --tracks-path example-tracks \
    --track-plot-solid \
    --track-plot-width-scale 4 \
    --output-path example-plots/alps.png

Result:

The following script illustrates how to limit the plots, using the dolomiti tag as an example.

python -m hikingplots.plot.main plot-area \
    --tracks-path example-tracks \
    --tag dolomiti \
    --track-plot-solid \
    --track-plot-width-scale 2 \
    --output-path example-plots/only-dolomiti.png

Notice that the smaller the resulting area, the blurrier the image looks because of the limited resolution of the GMTED2010 dataset:

The script offers several options to tune the appearance. Use the following script to display them:

python -m hikingplots.plot.main plot-area --help

Plot a single track in black and white

This library also contains code to plot a single track in black and white. This is intended to be used with the hiking quiz, here is an illustration just to show what this is about.

python -m hikingplots.plot.main plot-track-duotone \
    example-tracks/widderstein \
    --draw-topo \
    --draw-major-level-labels \
    --track-halign center \
    --output-path example-plots/widderstein-duotone.png

Result:

If this looks pixelated to you, then you are correct. The reason is that this is rendered for an 800x480 e-Paper display that only supports black and white (no grayscale).

Notes

The scripts support other activities like cycling tours. Set

type: cycling

in metadata.yaml.