Earthquake Catalogs

SCSN Catalog (1932-present)

The SCEDC has compiled all available historic seismic data holdings in southern California to create a single-source for online access to southern California earthquake data. The catalog goes back to the beginning of routine seismological operations by the Caltech Seismological Laboratory in 1932. A basic description of the contents of the catalog over time can be found at SCSN Archive Information in the "About" section. Today the catalog is stored in a central relational database which allows updates made by the SCSN and its analysts to be immediately visible to the user. Users can search the catalog or download large time spans in pre-made files, which are re-generated daily. The files are version controlled in the SCEDC repository on GitHub. (See below)

Change History

Changes in practices/procedures that affect catalog quality,results, or formats can be found in the change history.

Catalog Processing Status

The SCEDC hosts files that show the curation status of a given day in the earthquake catalog. Historically, SCSN analysts have made an effort to review every event in our catalog. With the growth of the network and catalog, however, complete review has become more difficult with our limited staff. This is particularly true of the 2019 Ridgecrest sequence, which remains largely unreviewed below M2.5. These files can be found at at this location. They are updated daily.

Access Methods for SCSN Catalog

Catalog Search Forms

• SCSN Catalog Search (1932-Present) searchable form
• SCSN Moment Tensor Catalog searchable form
• SCSN Focal Mechanism Catalog searchable form

Web Services

• Web STP is a web service version of STP, which allows users to retrieve continuous or triggered waveform data in various formats, as well as download phase data for events in the SCEDC earthquake catalog. Users can either use the form or call the service programmatically via curl or wget.
• FDSN Event Waveform Web Service allows users to retrieve earthquake parametric data in quakeML format. This service follows FDSN Web Service specifications (fdsnws-event). Users can either use the form or call the service programmatically via curl or wget.

Client

• Seismogram Transfer Program (STP) - SCEDC's own software client for retrieving waveforms and parametric data from the SCEDC archive

Pre-made Static ASCII Files (best for large dataset analysis)

• The SCEDC AWS Public Dataset - A copy of SCEDC's data is hosted in s3 bucket and is free to download as part of the AWS Open Dataset program. Updates are made daily.
• SCSN Format Earthquake Catalog. Updated daily and version controlled in SCEDC repository in GitHub
• SCEDC Format Earthquake Catalog. Updated daily and version controlled in SCEDC repository in GitHub

Alternate Catalogs - Locations and focal mechanisms submitted by researchers

The SCEDC also hosts a number of earthuquake catalogs provided by researchers who have applied further processing techniques. More information can be found on the Alternate Southern California Earthquake Catalogs page.