How to merge small polygons with neighbor polygons using geopandas and pysal

[mohseniaref]

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• [ x] I have asked my usage related question on StackOverflow or GIS StackExhange.

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Question about geopandas

How to merge small polygons with neighbor polygons using geopandas and pysal
I want to merge small polygons based on their area,etc. with adjacent neighbor polygons. For instance, we want to merge all countries in an iterative way to have a world map in which all small countries merge with neighbors and no countries smaller than the threshold area don't exist. I really appreciate if you can guide me how to do this using pysal and geopandas.

import geopandas, numpy
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from esda import topo
from libpysal import weights
earth = geopandas.read_file(
    geopandas.datasets.get_path('naturalearth_lowres'))
wm=earth.to_crs('epsg:3395')
wm["area"] = wm['geometry'].area/ 10**6
wm=wm.to_crs('epsg:4326')
wm.sort_values('area', ascending=False)
f,ax = plt.subplots(1,1,figsize=(12,6))
wm.plot('area', ax=ax,cmap=plt.cm.get_cmap("viridis"),vmin=5660,vmax=80000)

[martinfleis]

Have a look at sjsrey/geoplanar#36. You should be able to use or slightly adapt that function to do what you want.