Workshops

The GMT team and other volunteers teach user and developer workshops in various places. Here is a list of past and future workshops.

Attending a workshop is the best way to get started using and developing GMT!

Upcoming Workshops

2024-12-08 | Mastering Geospatial Visualizations with GMT/PyGMT at AGU Fall Meeting 2024

This workshop aims to provide a detailed technical demonstration of GMT/PyGMT’s capabilities in creating maps and visualizations of geospatial, geophysical, and planetary data across a wide range of applications. PyGMT, a Python library built on top of the Generic Mapping Tools (GMT), offers an intuitive and accessible interface for generating high-quality figures suitable for publication. Suitable for both beginner and advanced Python users, this workshop will cover advanced techniques for manipulating geospatial and geophysical data, widely utilized in the Earth, Ocean and Planetary Science communities, providing participants with the necessary skills to extract meaningful insights and effectively communicate their findings through clear and informative maps and visualizations. By exploring GMT/PyGMT’s functionalities, participants will have the opportunity to learn how to create customized maps and data visualizations tailored to the specific needs of their research areas.

We invite students and researchers from the Earth, Ocean, and Planetary sciences community to join. The focus of this workshop is to develop skills on using free and open source software, coding, data manipulation and visualization. Learn to produce publication-ready figures, especially geographic maps, using PyGMT including the integration with the PyData ecosystem.


Past Workshops

2023-06-26 | GMT for Geodesy EarthScope

This course will cover the use of Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) in geodesy using UNIX shell scripting. Lectures (on YouTube) and exercises will be given to teach the basic conventions of using GMT, such as plotting grids, images, and vector data (points, lines, polygons), and making animations. Labs will include both processing and mapping of various data sets relevant to geodesy.

2022-07-05 | GMT for Geodesy UNAVCO

This course will cover the use of Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) in geodesy using UNIX shell scripting. Lectures and exercises will be given to teach the basic conventions of using GMT, such as plotting grids, images, and vector data (points, lines, polygons), and making animations. Labs will include both processing and mapping of various data sets relevant to geodesy.

2022-05-24 | Crafting beautiful maps with PyGMT at EGU General Assembly 2022

This short course is geared towards geoscientists interested in creating beautiful maps using Python. Only basic Python knowledge is needed, and a background in cartography is not required to use PyGMT effectively! The 1.5 hour long short course will be based on content adapted from https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/2021-unavco-course and https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/foss4g2019oceania. The session will consist of a 10 minute introduction followed by four 20 minute sessions, each of which will include demonstrations using interactive Jupyter notebooks. Participants will be able to follow along with the demonstration using online computing environments, and there will be a separate opportunity to engage with the other participants and short course instructors.

We expressly welcome students and geoscientists working on any geo related fields (e.g. Earth Observation, Geophysical, Marine, Magnetic, Gravity, Planetary, etc) to join. Come and find out what PyGMT can do to level up your geoprocessing workflow!

2021-08-17 | Earth Science Women’s Network/GMT Workshop: Developing Free and Open Source Software with PyGMT

We are excited to announce an upcoming workshop hosted by the Earth Science Women’s Network and the Generic Mapping Tools team on developing free, open source software! This workshop will include lessons about developing open source software and hands-on activities. During the hands-on activities, participants will contribute to open source software and work on issues in the PyGMT repository. More information is posted on the ESWN Announcement.

We expressly invite people who face under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in the Earth sciences and/or technology industry where they live to apply. People of all career stages are welcome to apply.

2021-07-20 | GMT for Geodesy UNAVCO

This course will cover the use of Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) in geodesy using UNIX shell scripting. Lectures and exercises will be given to teach the basic conventions of using GMT, such as plotting grids, images, and vector data (points, lines, polygons), and making animations. Labs will include both processing and mapping of various data sets relevant to geodesy.

2020-07-20 | GMT for Geodesy UNAVCO

This course will cover the use of Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) in geodesy using UNIX shell scripting. Lectures and exercises will be given to teach the basic conventions of using GMT, such as plotting grids, images, and vector data (points, lines, polygons), and making animations.

2020-06-21 | Making Maps and Movies [CANCELLED]

The Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) is widely used in the geosciences to make graphs, maps and animations. This one-day workshop introduces participants to GMT 6 modern mode and how data manipulation and plotting of points, lines, polygons, text, and grids are accomplished via GMT scripting. We will run GMT scripts from the command line in a bash terminal under Linux, macOS, or Windows; familiarity with a UNIX shell will be helpful but not required. We will also introduce participants to the making of basic animations using GMT. No prior experience with GMT is required. Attendees must bring laptops with pre-installed software to the workshop – instructions will be provided before the conference.

2019-12-08 | GMT Developer Workshop at AGU2019

  • Title: Become a Generic Mapping Tools Contributor Even If You Can’t Code

  • Instructors: Paul Wessel, Joaquim Luis, Leonardo Uieda, Dongdong Tian, Xiaohua Xu

  • When: Sunday, 08 December 2019 08:00 am -12:20 pm (PST)

  • Where: AGU 2019 Fall Meeting | Moscone Convention Center, San Francisco, CA, USA

  • Website: https://www.agu.org/Events/SCIWS4-Generic-Mapping-Tools

We will teach you how to join the GMT developer community and make contributions to the project EVEN IF YOU CAN’T CODE. This workshop will provide hands-on experience: we will guide you through setting up your computer, building GMT, writing documentation, and using git and GitHub to work on GMT development in a friendly and collaborative environment.

2019-11-12 | PyGMT Workshop at FOSS4G Oceania 2019

This hands-on workshop covers the use of PyGMT to analyze geospatial data and produce publication quality figures and animations in an interactive Jupyter lab environment. There will also be a free Community Day code sprint on 2019-11-15 where everyone is invited to join and contribute into making PyGMT even better!

2019-07-22 | GMT for Geodesy at Scripps

  • Title: The Generic Mapping Tools for Geodesy

  • Instructors: Paul Wessel, Joaquim Luis, Leonardo Uieda, Dongdong Tian, Xiaohua Xu

  • When: July 22-23 (Monday-Tuesday), 2019. 9:00 am - 5:00 pm

  • Where: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA, USA

  • Repository: https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/2019-unavco-course

This 2-day course will cover the use of Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) in geodesy using UNIX shell scripting. Lectures and exercises will be given to teach the basic conventions of using GMT, such as plotting grids, images, and vector data (points, lines, polygons).