.. _cartopy_feature_interface: The cartopy Feature interface ============================= The :ref:`data copyright, license and attribution ` can be blended on the map using `text annotations (mpl docs) `_ as shown in `feature_creation <../gallery/feature_creation.html>`_. Specific Feature subclasses have been defined for common functionality, such as accessing Natural Earth or GSHHS shapefiles. A list of these can be found in :ref:`the reference documentation `. To simplify some very common cases, some pre-defined Features exist as :mod:`cartopy.feature` constants. The pre-defined Features are all small-scale (1:110m) `Natural Earth `_ datasets, and can be added with methods such as :func:`GeoAxes.add_feature `: ======================= ================================================================ Name Description ======================= ================================================================ .. py:data:: BORDERS Country boundaries. .. py:data:: COASTLINE Coastline, including major islands. .. py:data:: LAKES Natural and artificial lakes. .. py:data:: LAND Land polygons, including major islands. .. py:data:: OCEAN Ocean polygons. .. py:data:: RIVERS Single-line drainages, including lake centerlines. .. py:data:: STATES Internal, first-order administrative boundaries (limited to the United States at this scale). Natural Earth have first-order admin boundaries for most countries at the 1:10,000,000 scale; these may be accessed with ``cartopy.feature.STATES.with_scale('10m')`` ======================= ================================================================ .. note:: Any Natural Earth dataset can be used by creating an instance of :class:`cartopy.feature.NaturalEarthFeature`. For example:: import cartopy.feature as cfeature land_50m = cfeature.NaturalEarthFeature('physical', 'land', '50m', edgecolor='face', facecolor=cfeature.COLORS['land']) A dictionary of some useful colors for drawing features also exists in :attr:`cartopy.feature.COLORS`. For a full list of names in this dictionary: >>> import cartopy.feature >>> sorted(cartopy.feature.COLORS.keys()) ['land', 'land_alt1', 'water'] ------------ Example of using the Feature class with the Matplotlib interface ---------------------------------------------------------------- .. figure:: ../gallery/lines_and_polygons/images/sphx_glr_feature_creation_001.png :target: ../gallery/lines_and_polygons/feature_creation.html :align: center :scale: 50