M_Map: A mapping package for Matlab

1. Routines to project data in 18 different spherical projections (and determine inverse mappings)
2. A grid generation routine to make nice axes with limits either in lat/long terms or in planar X/Y terms.
3. A coastline database (with 1/4 degree resolution)
4. A global elevation database (1 degree resolution)
5. Hooks into freely available high-resolution coastline and bathymetry databases

New in release 1.3g are

1. Links to Jan Even Nilsen's m_namebox routines. This is a slick database-driven routine that can be used to add names to your maps, more or less automatically.

1. m_xydist and m_lldist to estimate distances between points in either geographic or map coordinates.
2. m_legend (create a legend box!).
3. m_plot
4. Many minor bug fixes.

1. m_range_rings primitive to draw range rings (just great for nuclear weapon destruction radii and seismic travel-time data - see example 11).
2. Extended usefullness of m_ungrid to allow removal of any specific plot element by a command line option.

1. m_patch primitive
2. m_scale primitive to allow drawing of maps at a required scale
3. True elliptical UTM projection (thanks to P. Lemmond)
4. m_track for drawing tracklines with time/date annotation (thanks to P. Lemmond)(example 10)
5. m_plotbndry - hooks into an online database of political boundaries (Thanks to M. Mann)

1. High-resolution coastlines! (through hooks into the nested set of coastlines at different resolutions making up the Global Self-consistent Hierarchical High-resolution Shoreline Database (GSHHS) used by GMT (see example 9)
2. Instructions on how to use the new Sandwell and Smith bathymetry
3. Hammer-Aitoff (example 11) and Mollweide projections (example 4)

1. Built-in functions for drawing lines, text, and quiver plots in long/lat coords
2. Built-in functions for contouring data (filled and line contours) in long/lat coords
3. Hooks into a 5-minute global bathymetry ( TerrainBase ) available from the net.
4. Fancy quiver plots, thanks to E. Firing (see example 8)
5. Gall-Peters projection (handy for large tropical areas)
6. Fancy outline boxes! (see example 2 and example 6)

How to get M_Map

A number of examples have been given to highlight the various capabilities of M_Map.

You can also get  m_namebox (a set of utilities for automatically adding names to you map), either through its home page http://www.gfi.uib.no/~even/matlab/m_namebox/m_namebox.html or directly as a zip file

User's guide

1. Getting started
2. Specifying projections
1. Azimuthal projections
2. Cylindrical and Pseudo-cylindrical projections
3. Conic projections
4. Miscellaneous global projections
5. Yeah, but which projection should I use?
6. Map scales
3. Coastlines and Bathymetry
1. Coastline options
2. Topography/Bathymetry options
4. Customizing the axes
1. Grid lines and labels
2. Titles and x/ylabels
3. Legend Boxes 
5. Adding your own data
1. Drawing lines, text, arrows, patches and contours 
2. Drawing tracklines
3. Drawing range rings
4. Converting longitude/latitude to projection coordinates
5. Converting projection coordinates to longitude/latitude
6. Computing distances between points 
6. More complex plots
7. Removing data from a plot
8. Adding your own coastlines
1. DCW political boundaries
9. Adding your own topography/bathymetry
1. Sandwell and Smith Bathymetry
10. Using TerrainBase 5-minute global bathymetry/topography
11. Using the GSHHS high-resolution coastline database
1. Installing GSHHS
2. Using GSHHS effectively
12. M_Map toolbox contents and description
13. Known Problems and Bugs
14. Changes since last release 

Acknowledgements

Examples

1. M_Map Logo

m_proj('ortho','lat',48','long',-123');
m_coast('patch','r');
m_grid('linest','-','xticklabels',[],'yticklabels',[]);
patch(.55*[-1 1 1 -1],.25*[-1 -1 1 1]-.55,'w');
text(0,-.55,'M\_Map','fontsize',25,'color','b',...
   'vertical','middle','horizontal','center');
set(gcf,'units','inches','position',[2 2 3 3]);
set(gcf,'paperposition',[3 3 3 3]);

2. Lambert Conformal Conic projection of North American Topography

m_proj('lambert','long',[-160 -40],'lat',[30 80]);
m_coast('patch',[1 .85 .7]);
m_elev('contourf',[500:500:6000]);
m_grid('box','fancy','tickdir','in');
colormap(flipud(copper));

3. Stereographic projection of North Polar regions

% Note that coastline is drawn OVER the grid because of the order in which
% the two routines are called

m_proj('stereographic','lat',90,'long',30,'radius',25);
m_elev('contour',[-3500:1000:-500],'edgecolor','b');
m_grid('xtick',12,'tickdir','out','ytick',[70 80],'linest','-');
m_coast('patch',[.7 .7 .7],'edgecolor','r');

4. Two Interrupted Projections of the World's Oceans

subplot(211);
Slongs=[-100 0;-75 25;-5 45; 25 145;45 100;145 295;100 290];
Slats= [  8 80;-80  8; 8 80;-80   8; 8  80;-80   0;  0  80];
for l=1:7,
 m_proj('sinusoidal','long',Slongs(l,:),'lat',Slats(l,:));
 m_grid('fontsize',6,'xticklabels',[],'xtick',[-180:30:360],...
        'ytick',[-80:20:80],'yticklabels',[],'linest','-','color',[.9 .9 .9]);
 m_coast('patch','g');
end;
xlabel('Interrupted Sinusoidal Projection of World Oceans');
% In order to see all the maps we must undo the axis limits set by m_grid calls:
set(gca,'xlimmode','auto','ylimmode','auto');

subplot(212);
Slongs=[-100 43;-75 20; 20 145;43 100;145 295;100 295];
Slats= [  0  90;-90  0;-90   0; 0  90;-90   0;  0  90];
for l=1:6,
 m_proj('mollweide','long',Slongs(l,:),'lat',Slats(l,:));
 m_grid('fontsize',6,'xticklabels',[],'xtick',[-180:30:360],...
        'ytick',[-80:20:80],'yticklabels',[],'linest','-','color','k');
 m_coast('patch',[.6 .6 .6]);
end;
xlabel('Interrupted Mollweide Projection of World Oceans');
set(gca,'xlimmode','auto','ylimmode','auto');

5. Oblique Mercator Projection with quiver and contour data

%% Nice looking data
[lon,lat]=meshgrid([-136:2:-114],[36:2:54]);
u=sin(lat/6);
v=sin(lon/6);

m_proj('oblique','lat',[56 30],'lon',[-132 -120],'aspect',.8);

subplot(121);
m_coast('patch',[.9 .9 .9],'edgecolor','none');
m_grid('tickdir','out','yaxislocation','right',...
       'xaxislocation','top','xlabeldir','end','ticklen',.02);
hold on;
m_quiver(lon,lat,u,v);
xlabel('Simulated surface winds');

subplot(122);
m_coast('patch',[.9 .9 .9],'edgecolor','none');
m_grid('tickdir','out','yticklabels',[],...
       'xticklabels',[],'linestyle','none','ticklen',.02);
hold on;
[cs,h]=m_contour(lon,lat,sqrt(u.*u+v.*v));
clabel(cs,h,'fontsize',8);
xlabel('Simulated something else');

6. Miller Projection with Great Circle

% Plot a circular orbit
lon=[-180:180];
lat=atan(tan(60*pi/180)*cos((lon-30)*pi/180))*180/pi;

m_proj('miller','lat',82);
m_coast('color',[0 .6 0]);
m_line(lon,lat,'linewi',3,'color','r');
m_grid('linestyle','none','box','fancy','tickdir','out');

7. Lambert Conformal Projection with high-resolution bathymetry of Western Mediterranean

m_proj('lambert','lon',[-10 20],'lat',[33 48]);
m_tbase('contourf');
m_grid('linestyle','none','tickdir','out','linewidth',3);

8. Demonstration of fancy vectors

m_vec   % See code in m_vec.m for details

9. Zoom in on Prince Edward Island to show different coastline resolutions

% Example showing the default coastline and all of the different resolutions 
% of GSHHS coastlines as we zoom in on a section of Prince Edward Island.

clf
axes('position',[.35 .6 .37 .37]);
m_proj('albers equal-area','lat',[40 60],'long',[-90 -50],'rect','on');
m_coast('patch',[0 1 0]);
m_grid('linest','none','linewidth',2,'tickdir','out','xaxisloc','top','yaxisloc','right');
m_text(-69,41,'Standard coastline','color','r','fontweight','bold');

axes('position',[.09 .5 .37 .37]);
m_proj('albers equal-area','lat',[40 54],'long',[-80 -55],'rect','on');
m_gshhs_c('patch',[.2 .8 .2]);
m_grid('linest','none','linewidth',2,'tickdir','out','xaxisloc','top');
m_text(-80,52.5,'GSHHS\_C (crude)','color','m','fontweight','bold','fontsize',14);

axes('position',[.13 .2 .37 .37]);
m_proj('albers equal-area','lat',[43 48],'long',[-67 -59],'rect','on');
m_gshhs_l('patch',[.4 .6 .4]);
m_grid('linest','none','linewidth',2,'tickdir','out');
m_text(-66.5,43.5,'GSHHS\_L (low)','color','m','fontweight','bold','fontsize',14);

axes('position',[.35 .05 .37 .37]);
m_proj('albers equal-area','lat',[45.8 47.2],'long',[-64.5 -62],'rect','on');
m_gshhs_i('patch',[.5 .6 .5]);
m_grid('linest','none','linewidth',2,'tickdir','out','yaxisloc','right');
m_text(-64.4,45.9,'GSHHS\_I (intermediate)','color','m','fontweight','bold','fontsize',14);

axes('position',[.55 .23 .37 .37]);
m_proj('albers equal-area','lat',[46.375 46.6],'long',[-64.2 -63.7],'rect','on');
m_gshhs_h('patch',[.6 .6 .6]);
m_grid('linest','none','linewidth',2,'tickdir','out','xaxisloc','top','yaxisloc','right');
m_text(-64.18,46.58,'GSHHS\_H (high)','color','m','fontweight','bold','fontsize',14);

10. Tracklines and UTM projection

m_proj('UTM','long',[-72 -68],'lat',[40 44]);
m_gshhs_i('color','k');
m_grid('box','fancy','tickdir','in');

% fake up a trackline
lons=[-71:.1:-67];
lats=60*cos((lons+115)*pi/180);
dates=datenum(1997,10,23,15,1:41,zeros(1,41));

m_track(lons,lats,dates,'ticks',0,'times',4,'dates',8,...
        'clip','off','color','r','orient','upright');

11. Range rings

    m_proj('hammer','clong',170);
    m_grid('xtick',[],'ytick',[],'linestyle','-');
    m_coast('patch','g');
    m_line(100.5,13.5,'marker','square','color','r');
    m_range_ring(100.5,13.5,[1000:1000:15000],'color','b','linewi',2);
    xlabel('1000km range rings from Bangkok');