Add method to convert results enabling GeoDataFrame.explore() to be used for creation of interactive maps

[ebolch]

I have a rough example in this notebook. The end goal would be to have a simple function that would create a geodataframe and then an interactive plot, like:

results = earthaccess.search_data()
earthaccess.explore(results)

A few additional options could be things like plotting browse images or a way to limit the quantity of polygons/images displayed. This output is the interactive map from the above notebook after removing a few layers:

[MattF-NSIDC]

Thanks for the suggestion, that's a really cool idea that would be great for improving data accessibility!

We'll want to consider how this would affect earthaccess's dependencies.

[jhkennedy]

I think we could easily support something like this either as a plugin, or as optional dependencies following at pattern like:

try:
     import optional_package
except ImportError:
    optional_package = None


def function_that_uses_optional_package():
   if optional_package is None:
      raise ImportError('Optional Package is required to call this function')
      
   # function code...

[andypbarrett]

I like this idea but we should consider how it would work for all data granules. I'm thinking of ICESat-2 and other track data. Maybe we define these types of data as multi-lines.

[scottyhq]

This would be really useful! Is there currently a recommended approach to go from earthaccess search results to a geodataframe?

For example:

gf = gpd.GeoDataFrame.from_features(results.geojson(), crs='EPSG:4326')

Note: results.to_dict() is the syntax MS planetary computer uses (https://planetarycomputer.microsoft.com/docs/quickstarts/reading-stac/), but results.geojson() is what asf_search does (https://github.com/asfadmin/Discovery-asf_search/blob/bee8d92631780a988cbb1988266270241ebea23f/asf_search/ASFSearchResults.py#L23)

It seems a straightforward approach could be to include STAC as an output from CMR (https://cmr.earthdata.nasa.gov/search/site/docs/search/api.html), which is a GeoJSON feature collection and therefore can therefore be easily converted to a geodataframe.

[jhkennedy]

 gf = gpd.GeoDataFrame.from_features(results.geojson(), crs='EPSG:4326')

:clap: yes, I'd love to be able to do this line and use it frequently with asf_search. @iamdonovan also recently asked about this [edited for clarity]:

should I suggest/request a "to_dataframe" method?

[ebolch]

This somewhat exists in the explore branch that @betolink was working on, although its part of the SearchWidget class. I think it would be valuable even separate from the integration of an explore feature. There's a slightly modified version of that code in this module that LP DAAC used for a tutorial.