world map without rivers with matplotlib / Basemap?

Question

Would there be a way to plot the borders of the continents with Basemap (or without Basemap, if there is some other way), without those annoying rivers coming along? Especially

Answer 1

I frequently modify Basemap's drawcoastlines() to avoid those 'broken' rivers. I also modify drawcountries() for the sake of data source consistency.

Here is what I use in order to support the different resolutions available in Natural Earth data:

from mpl_toolkits.basemap import Basemap


class Basemap(Basemap):
    """ Modify Basemap to use Natural Earth data instead of GSHHG data """
    def drawcoastlines(self):
        shapefile = 'data/naturalearth/coastline/ne_%sm_coastline' % \
                    {'l':110, 'm':50, 'h':10}[self.resolution]
        self.readshapefile(shapefile, 'coastline', linewidth=1.)
    def drawcountries(self):
        shapefile = 'data/naturalearth/countries/ne_%sm_admin_0_countries' % \
                    {'l':110, 'm':50, 'h':10}[self.resolution]
        self.readshapefile(shapefile, 'countries', linewidth=0.5)


m = Basemap(llcrnrlon=-90, llcrnrlat=-40, urcrnrlon=-30, urcrnrlat=+20,
            resolution='l')  # resolution = (l)ow | (m)edium | (h)igh
m.drawcoastlines()
m.drawcountries()

Here is the output:

Please note that by default Basemap uses resolution='c' (crude), which is not supported in the code shown.