WDPA — comparing protected areas across countries¶

Fetch protected areas for several countries and compare how many each has, then map them together. Builds on the quickstart by looping the facade over a list of countries.

Token. Needs a Protected Planet v4 token in WDPA_TOKEN (https://api.protectedplanet.net/request). See Authentication.

Setup¶

In [ ]:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

from earthlens import EarthLens

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt from earthlens import EarthLens

Fetch a few East-African countries¶

A small set of neighbouring countries (you can pass friendly names too). Each download() returns a polygon FeatureCollection.

In [ ]:

countries = ["KEN", "TZA", "UGA"]
areas = {}
for iso3 in countries:
    areas[iso3] = EarthLens(
        data_source="wdpa",
        variables=[iso3],
        start="2024-01-01",
        end="2024-12-31",
        lat_lim=[-90.0, 90.0],
        lon_lim=[-180.0, 180.0],
        path="out/wdpa",
    ).download()
    print(f"{iso3}: {len(areas[iso3])} protected areas")

countries = ["KEN", "TZA", "UGA"] areas = {} for iso3 in countries: areas[iso3] = EarthLens( data_source="wdpa", variables=[iso3], start="2024-01-01", end="2024-12-31", lat_lim=[-90.0, 90.0], lon_lim=[-180.0, 180.0], path="out/wdpa", ).download() print(f"{iso3}: {len(areas[iso3])} protected areas")

Compare counts¶

In [ ]:

counts = {iso3: len(fc) for iso3, fc in areas.items()}
ax = plt.bar(list(counts), list(counts.values()), color="forestgreen")
plt.title("Protected-area count by country (WDPA)")
plt.ylabel("protected areas")
plt.show()

counts = {iso3: len(fc) for iso3, fc in areas.items()} ax = plt.bar(list(counts), list(counts.values()), color="forestgreen") plt.title("Protected-area count by country (WDPA)") plt.ylabel("protected areas") plt.show()

Map them together¶

In [ ]:

colors = ["forestgreen", "steelblue", "darkorange"]
ax = None
for (iso3, fc), color in zip(areas.items(), colors):
    ax = fc.plot(ax=ax, facecolor=color, edgecolor="black", alpha=0.5, label=iso3)
ax.set_title("Protected areas — Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda")
ax.legend()
plt.show()

colors = ["forestgreen", "steelblue", "darkorange"] ax = None for (iso3, fc), color in zip(areas.items(), colors): ax = fc.plot(ax=ax, facecolor=color, edgecolor="black", alpha=0.5, label=iso3) ax.set_title("Protected areas — Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda") ax.legend() plt.show()

Licensing¶

WDPA carries the custom UNEP-WCMC license (commercial use needs written permission; redistribution restricted), so every download raises a LicenseWarning.