Q:

Using GeoPandas to create a head map and the retuned image is tiny - how to change the scale?

I'm trying to create a heat map of the united states, and the output seems to be fine except the axis scale is way bigger than it needs to be causing the output image to be tiny.
Is this an issue with the source data or something I can fix?
my code:
states = 'USAstates.shp'

map_usa = gpd.read_file(states)

merged = map_usa.set_index('STUSPS').join(statecount.set_index('state'))
merged.head()

# set a variable that will call whatever column we want to visualise on the map
variable = 'index'

# create figure and axes for Matplotlib

fig, ax = plt.subplots(1, figsize=(10, 6))
lims = plt.axis('equal')

merged.plot(column=variable, cmap='Blues', linewidth=0.8, ax=ax, edgecolor='0.8')

and the output:

I've tried changing the figsize input but this doesn't really help.
Could someone advise how I should scale this properly please?
thanks!

A:

There is some geometry on the very right-hand side of the plot. If you want to zoom to continental US only, you can either drop that geometry or set xlim to the axis.
fig, ax = plt.subplots(1, figsize=(10, 6))

merged.plot(column=variable, cmap='Blues', linewidth=0.8, ax=ax, edgecolor='0.8')

ax.set_xlim(-180, -50)  # just a guess here

