Open GPS tracks (GPX files) with Geopandas

If you are programming in python, you might want to import your GPS tracks (taken with a GPS device or your mobile phone and tracking app) into a GeoDataFrame. It’s easy to import the tracks of all GPX files of a given folder.

import geopandas as gpd
import os
folder = "gpx/"

I want a GeoDataFrame with 2 columns: 1) file name and 2) geometry of the track.

# Create empty GeoDataFrame
track = gpd.GeoDataFrame(columns=['name', 'geometry'], 
     geometry='geometry')

Try to open all gpx files in folder. Geopandas uses fiona to open/parse gpx. The layer “tracks” only contains the track
without waypoints/timestamps (good enough for plotting maps).

for file in os.listdir(folder):
    if file.endswith(('.gpx')):
        try:
            gdf = gpd.read_file(folder + file, layer='tracks')
            track = track.append(gdf[['name', 'geometry']])
        except:
            print("Error", file)

track.sort_values(by="name", inplace=True)
track.reset_index(inplace=True, drop=True)

Now you can plot, edit or export your GeoDataframe.

# Save tracks as Shapefile
track.to_file(folder + 'track.shp')

# Simple plot
track.plot()

You can also try PyGMT to plot pretty maps of your GPS track. In my posts about runkeeper GPS tracks (part 1 and part 2), I explain how tracks can be analysed and plotted on an interactive map.