How to read shapely file in specific coordinate format or change coordinate format packed DMS with decimal to DMS format

Question

I am using GeoPandas to read a shapefile using read_file() function. However, my polygons are in the following format:

(longitude: latitude) = (3229083.936279297 13792922.909729).

Also, whenever I visualize I found that the latitude part, e.g. 13792922.909729 actually means 1.37, so there are some fractional values hidden inside the polygon I guess.

I am not very familiar with this format. Is it possible to convert automatically these polygons into normal DMS format, e.g. like (longitude: latitude) = (-95.606088 29.761605) during reading time or normal format into that format. Can give me some insights into the format?

Answer 1

Uncertain that the 1.37 is correct? The shapefile being read will have a coordinate reference system (CRS) in it's .prj file, that determines how shapely/geopandas understands the coordinates. To translate the coords into the more commonly understood WGS 1984 format you can use the .to_crs("epsg:4326") command.

Longitude is always before latitude on Cartesian plane.

gf = gp.read_file("path_to_file")
print(gf.crs)

gf = gf.to_crs("epsg:4326")
print(gf.crs)

gf.plot()