MalaGIS

Sharing GIS Technologies, Resources and News.

Early yesterday morning, our team received several messages in the Malagis GIS backend asking why the ArcGIS Pro basemap services couldn’t be loaded. I went to check it out and was quite puzzled—everything was working smoothly on my end without any issues. So, I posted about it on social media and found that most friends couldn’t access it either, with only a few reporting it was working. Some also shared solutions in the comments.

After seeing everyone’s workarounds, I realized my tool had been set to the default mode all along. After switching to direct mode, a big exclamation mark indeed appeared.

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On September 10, 2025, the National Forestry and Grassland Administration (NFGA) announced Notice No. 12 of 2025, officially approving the establishment of the Huangyan Island National Nature Reserve. In accordance with the relevant provisions of the "Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Nature Reserves," the area, scope, and functional zoning of the Huangyan Island National Nature Reserve are hereby published. The reserve is located in Sansha City, Hainan Province, covering a total area of 3,523.67 hectares. This includes a core zone of 1,242.55 hectares and an experimental zone of 2,281.12 hectares. The primary conservation objective is the coral reef ecosystem. The main areas are shown in the figure below:

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Many friends often leave messages on the MalaGIS website asking if there are free DEM data download resources. While other users have shared numerous posts on this topic—covering data sources like SRTM, ASTER GDEM, ALOS, and Copernicus DEM—these are relatively professional datasets typically manageable only by GIS practitioners. So, are there tools suitable for beginners or the general public? For instance, a tool that allows online viewing of a region's terrain with 3D rendering effects without the need to download professional GIS or 3D software? Recently, I discovered a small tool called WorldViewR and would like to share it with you.

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Recently, Nano Banana has been explosively popular, with many novel use cases emerging online, such as generating figurines, image restoration, and architectural image generation models. Attracted by these, we also tried it out and discovered two small applications related to GIS. Today, we'd like to share the prompts with you (Code is Cheap, show me the talk).

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Last year, our team introduced how to load lunar datasets in Cesium. Now, one year later, Cesium has officially begun supporting the Mars dataset—Cesium Mars. Cesium Mars is a 3D Tileset designed to enable developers and researchers to quickly create visualizations and simulations of Mars. The dataset integrates laser altimeter data (MOLA) from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), high-resolution stereo camera imagery (HRSC) from ESA's Mars Express, and color satellite image rendering, realistically recreating the visual appearance of Mars.

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In the previous article titled "Displaying Selected Layer Count in QGIS with PyQGIS - MalaGIS", the author introduced a method to quickly view the number of selected layers using QGIS's Python API. However, if you need this functionality, you must open QGIS, then open the Python Console, locate the saved Python script file, and run it every single time. Although this process is simple, it can become tedious after repeated use. So, is there a way to automatically run a Python script when QGIS starts up? The author searched online and finally found a temporarily viable method to share today.

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Preface: This article is compiled based on the author's experience with internet mapping services. While consumer map applications offer automatic location detection, professional GIS tools like QGIS lack this functionality natively. This guide demonstrates how to implement this feature.

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When working with numerous layers in QGIS, it is often necessary to select multiple layers simultaneously for operations. However, with a large number of layers, it becomes difficult to quickly discern exactly how many are selected—don't worry, you can easily solve this by writing a small tool with PyQGIS!

Today, we share two methods to display the count of selected layers in real-time. These methods are straightforward to implement, with clear code, and can be tried by those in need.

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Recently, I was assigned another GIS dashboard project. My manager asked me to research the mainstream design styles currently on the market. Coincidentally, I had previously introduced a collection of such dashboard works in an article titled "Open-Source Dashboard Templates for GIS Developers: BigDataView Project". Combined with various examples shared within our community group, I managed to complete the task.

During the research process, I noticed an interesting phenomenon: many dashboards still use maps in the EPSG:3857 projection, which results in a "tilted" depiction of China's map. Therefore, using OpenLayers and Leaflet as examples, and with the help of various AI tools, I created two demos to implement the rendering of the Albers projection on the web.

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Yesterday, someone in a group shared a map of China's 2024 birth rate, which looked quite interesting. However, this map was different from the usual ones—regions with lower birth rates were colored redder. Someone asked if it could be quickly recreated.

Two years ago, I might have been too lazy to bother because redrawing the map would require manually extracting and recording data from the map one by one, then importing it into QGIS or ArcGIS for data processing, and finally producing the map. But in 2025, the era of AI, this task is a breeze. Today, I'll share a set of AI-based rapid map production methods. Next time you encounter such a demand, just go for it!

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