Alternative installation methods for Conda environments

In the previous section () we installed our specific conda Python environment with a pre-defined environment configuration file. In this section we show an alternative variant how you can install conda environments in a more flexible way if you need to.

You could do this with ‘conda/miniconda’ or ‘mamba/micromamba’, just use the appropriate tool which you have installed.

BEWARE:

Please DO NOT follow these steps, if you already have the environment installed via the environment.yml configuration above.

This other variant is typically more widely used in exploratory setups. It is a step-by-step procedure. Here we are making sure that Python in version 3.10 or 3.11 will be installed and that we want to explicitly use the additional package channel conda-forge. And we give the environment a name (-n).

If you would create your environment manually, it would go like that: Open the Anaconda prompt from the Start Menu and type the command below.

(C:\dev\conda3) conda create -n geopython2025alt python=3.11 -c conda-forge

Ok, now that we have installed a Python working environment with the name geopython2025alt with our desired library packages, we can check installed environments just to be sure. In order to show all environments that have already been created you can ask conda to list these:

(C:\dev\conda3)  conda env list

Now we want to activate that environment, install additional packages and start working with it:

(C:\dev\conda3)  activate geopython2025alt

(geopython2025alt)

Install GIS related packages with conda by running in command prompt following commands (in the same order as they are listed). Make sure you are in the correct environment (don't install into base, install new packages ideally only into your designated created environments)

(geopython2025alt) conda install -c conda-forge numpy pandas gdal fiona shapely geopandas

# Install matplotlib and Jupyter Lab/Notebook
(geopython2025alt) conda install -c conda-forge matplotlib jupyter jupyterlab

# Install seaborn
(geopython2025alt) conda install -c conda-forge seaborn

# Install geoplot and cartopy
(geopython2025alt) conda install -c conda-forge cartopy geoviews

# Install mapclassify
(geopython2025alt) conda install -c conda-forge mapclassify

# Install rasterio and rasterstats
(geopython2025alt) conda install -c conda-forge rasterio rasterstats

In the next step, 5. Setting up Jupyter Notebook, you would continue with verifying the installation, testing that everything works and configuring the JupyterLab notebook server.