🪐 GeoJupyter & JupyterGIS 🌐

Exploring more approachable geospatial data workflows as an open community

Matt Fisher

Schmidt DSE, UC Berkeley

👋 Hi, I’m Matt! GitHub: @mfisher87

💻 Research Software Engineer (RSE)

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Community Engagement Manager

🌱 Working at Schmidt DSE @ UC Berkeley

❄️ Previously at National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC)

👐 Open source maintainer & contributor: jupytergis, earthaccess, conda-forge feedstocks, more!

👐 📖 🧠 🌱 🎶 🥁 🎹 🐶

mfisher87.github.io/presentation-agu2025

Hello friends!

Before I get started, this talk is going to have lots of links. Please scan the QR code so you can follow any links you’re interested in.

I’m Matt Fisher, and I’m a Research Software Engineer and Community Engagement Manager.

I’m currently leading the GeoJupyter project at Schmidt Center for Data Science and Environment at UC Berkeley.

I’m a maintainer of several open source projects, and maybe we’ve interacted on GitHub before! This talk is going to be about JupyterGIS, and I also want to mention earthaccess, which helps you access NASA data in 3 lines of Python. You’ll hear more about this in an upcoming talk.

I’m passionate about open science, documentation, and design to minimize cognitive load.

I also love gardening, playing the drums and keyboards, and dogs 😁

Dog selfie

🧠 Jupyter is more than Notebooks

• Community!
• Tools for thinking!
• JupyterLab: Modular and extensible architecture for interactive computing

Building on the themes of the previous talk by Fernando, Jupyter is more than Notebooks – in particular, Jupyter Lab is a modular and extensible architecture for interactive computing with powerful, reusable building blocks.

All of the items in the image below are what we call extensions.

For example, the jupyter-collaboration extension enables users to collaborate on Notebooks in real time like Google Docs.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 GeoJupyter is a community!

GeoJupyter is not software; it’s a community which will build many things together!

As another refresher, GeoJupyter is a community-directed effort to reimagine geospatial interactive computing experiences with the power of the Jupyter architecture. The project has many components including software, education, and cross-collaboration with other communities.

Because our work is led by our community, we depend on your feedback and ideas! I’ll share how to get in touch at the end.

JupyterGIS, the big blue circle, is our flagship project, and that’s what I’ll focus on today!

🌐 JupyterGIS: What’s the big idea?

🧑‍🎨 Human-centered, participatory design

👐 Open source and open science

🤸 Approachability and playfulness, like graphical GIS tools

🪶 Flexibility and reproducibility, like coding methods

🎭 Collaboration and storytelling, like Jupyter Notebooks

The idea behind JupyterGIS is to apply GeoJupyter community values, including participatory design (allowing users to lead the way), to unify the good stuff from three areas of geospatial computing to unlock new workflows.

We want the approachability and playfulness of graphical and desktop GIS tools; the flexibility and reproducibility of coding or scripting methods; and the collaboration and storytelling of the Jupyter ecosystem.

You got your desktop GIS experience in my coding environment!

These values have historically been prioritized in separate tools and techniques, but we believe they go together like chocolate and peanut butter!

We also believe that the only way to succeed at this is for software engineers and geospatial data practitioners to empathize and collaborate with each other.

🌐 JupyterGIS

‼️ Early development ‼️

Let’s talk about some of our work in progress now!

JupyterGIS, led by the awesome folks at QuantStack in Paris, is in early development, so we’d love for you to try it and provide us feedback! Remember, the project is community-led, so you can make an impact by sharing your impressions.

❓ What is JupyterGIS and how is it different?

Read the slide

Note that JupyterLite can be used entirelye in the browser without installing anything!

• Interactive GIS environment
• Jupyter- and browser-native (try it in JupyterLab/Hub/Lite!)
• Python API for Notebook integration
• Supports QGIS project files
• Real-time collaboration: like Google Docs, but on a map!

Let’s take a look at some of the things we can do with JupyterGIS.

🏠 All under one familiar roof (JupyterLab)!

A screenshot of JupyterGIS

JupyterGIS is a JupyterLab extension.

Remember, Jupyter is more than Notebooks! Here we see JupyterGIS running 4 different instances, one of which is in a Notebook.

🔍 Explore data

Inspecting attributes of a building footprint (eo science for society blog)

We can explore datasets interactively – here we are inspecting attributes of a buildings dataset.

🧮 Process data

Calculating convex hulls of regions of France (eo science for society blog)

We can perform data processing operations in a visual environment – here we’ve calculated convex hulls of regions of France.

🛒 Browse curated layers

The JupyterGIS layer browser

We can add layers to our map from a curated layer browser.

🔮 Discover data with STAC (WIP)

Browsing a STAC catalog in JupyterGIS (eo science for society blog)

We can discover data using Spatio Temporal Asset Catalogs, or “STAC catalogs”, a modern standard for computer interface with data catalogs.

This is a work in progress that will continue to evolve over time!

🔢 Support for Xarray datasets

Visualizing an Xarray dataset, tiled on-the-fly (TiTiler, David Brochart)

Thanks to the modular Jupyter architecture, we can build extensions on extensions to compose cool new features.

Here we’re using jupytergis-tiler by David Brochart of Quantstack, to display data in an Xarray dataset on-the-fly in JupyterGIS.

Under the hood, the TiTiler dynamic tile server by Development Seed is powering this functionality.

🤝 Collaborate

Two users collaborating in real-time on a JupyterGIS project (QuantStack)

Thanks again to the modular Jupyter architecture, we can leverage the jupyter-collaboration extension, which enables real-time collaboration on Notebooks, to enable real-time collaboration on a map.

Here you can see two users’ cursors (emphasized for visibility) on the same map.

🤝 Collaborate: Follow a user

One user following another in real-time on a JupyterGIS project (QuantStack)

In this graphic, one user is following another user’s viewport activity in real time.

🤝 Collaborate: Edit together

Two users editing a shared map (QuantStack)

Here you can see collaborators editing a shared map.

🤝 Collaborate: Annotations

Two users having a conversation with spatial context through annotations (QuantStack)

Here you can see collaborators having a spatially aware conversation, like comments in Google Docs.

🧠 Jupyter is more than Notebooks

You just saw some new ideas about how Jupyter’s architecture can be applied to the geospatial domain.

We want you to think about this – where can the power of Jupyter’s modular and reusable architecture enable new and innovative geospatial workflows?

geojupyter.org

Please bring those awesome ideas to our community!

In the GeoJupyter community, you can find folks with similar problems to yours, ask and answer questions, and participate in designing the future of geospatial interactive computing!

🚪 How you can join

🗨️ Chat with us on the Jupyter Zulip!

🎙️ Sign up for an interview!

📆 Join a hackathon or community meeting!

🧪 Try JupyterGIS! Where does it meet your needs (or not)?

🎁 Report bugs, request features! Open Pull Requests!

😎 Share your rad vibes and leadership!

💰 Sponsor us to increase our capacity!

There are lots of ways you can join us.

If you can only do one thing, join us on the Jupyter Zulip, which is like an open-source Slack. There’s a GeoJupyter channel there! So many cool people are there, I promise you’ll fit right in ;)

We’d love to talk to you about your needs, frustrations, and opinions in an interview.

It would be amazing to see you at one of our bi-weekly hackathons or monthly community meetings! You can view our community calendar on geojupyter.org or by following the link.

JupyterGIS is available for install with pip, conda, or equivalents. If you follow the link or visit the documentation, you can find a link to try JupyterGIS in your browser without installing anything! We’re jazzed to hear what you think 😄

Of course, we’d love to work with you directly on GeoJupyter projects, with special interest in how you think Jupyter’s modular and reusable architecture can be applied to make geospatial data workflows more accessible and enjoyable.

We’re excited to expand our funded development team, so if your company is interested in sponsoring this work with funds or engineering time, please reach out.

📣 Other GeoJupyter happenings at AGU

• Workshop SCIWS10 - Open Geospatial Workflows in the Cloud
  • 👐 All materials open source!
  • Thursday, December 18th; 8:30-5:00
  • Room 333-334
• Town Hall TH45J - A Discussion with GeoJupyter and Cloud-Native Geospatial Community Members
  • 👂 We want to hear from you!
  • Thursday, December 18th; 6:00-7:00
  • Room 286-287

events.geojupyter.org/conferences/2025-agu/

We have some other events going on this week! Follow the QR code for all the details.

We’re running a full-day workshop on Thursday. If you signed up, we’re excited to see you there!

If you’re interested but you didn’t sign up, don’t worry, we got you! First, we’ll be delivering this workshop in person again in other venues.

More importantly, all workshop materials are a free and open source community resource you can use and contribute to. Please use them on your own time, reuse them in your local communities, fork them and remix them to meet your unique needs!

Thursday evening we’re hosting a town hall. We have an all-star line up of 5 panelists that are thrilled to have an open discussion with you. Please join us, no registration required.

❤️ Thank you

I want to thank everyone involved in this community effort. So many people and organizations are working together to make cool stuff happen!

Special thanks to QuantStack for leading the development of JupyterGIS.

❤️ Thank you for listening! ❤️

https://mfisher87.github.io/presentation-agu2025

💌 Contact me: Zulip, GitHub, email

Thanks for your time and attention!

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly with any questions! Out of these options, I’m most active on the Jupyter Zulip.

And I hope to see you around the conference 😄

🎉 Bonus slides

FAQ

• 😐 What about <existing tool>?
  • 🔥 We understand we’re the “new kids on the block” and we’re coming in hot.
  • We are interested in building on the amazing progress of recent decades and learning lessons from modern users.
  • Understanding geographic space and scale is centuries in the making, bigger than any company or project, including ours.
• ⏱️ Timeline?
  • ✨ JupyterGIS available to install right now!
  • 🤷 It depends! We’re listening to users to identify priorities.