Earthquake Catalogs
Alternate Catalogs
The standard Caltech/USGS southern California catalog does not account for local variations in the seismic velocity structure, which limits the accuracy of its event locations. By applying various techniques in post-processing of the data, it is possible to improve location accuracy, and some of these improved catalogs are listed here.
Several of these catalogs (Lin et al. 2007; Hauksson and Shearer, 2007; Shearer et al., 2005) use results from SCEC-sponsored projects that apply waveform cross-correlation to make precise differential times between nearby events. In turn, the absolute picks combined with the differential travel times are applied to improve greatly the relative location accuracy within clusters of similar events.
Note that locations in these catalogs do not always agree in detail, reflecting the different modeling assumptions and seismic velocity structures that went into their construction. However, their overall agreement is quite good, particularly when compared to the standard catalog locations, and many details in the fine-scale structure of southern California seismicity can be resolved. Evaluating and improving earthquake locations remains an active research area.
Quake Template Matching (QTM) Catalogs:
Location Catalogs: Also available via FDSN Event Web Service
- 2011 - Hauksson, E., W. Yang, P. M. Shearer, Waveform Relocated Earthquake Catalog for Southern California (1981 to 2011) (includes 2011-2022 datasets)
- 2007 - Lin, G., P. M. Shearer, and E. Hauksson, Applying a 3D velocity model, waveform cross-correlation, and cluster analysis to locate southern California seismicity from 1981 to 2005
- 2005 - Hauksson and Shearer: locations using double-difference
- 2005 - Shearer, Hauksson and Lin: locations using waveform cross-correlation and cluster analysis
- 2003 - Hauksson: 3-D earthquake locations
- 2000 - Richards-Dinger and Shearer: locations using source-specific station terms
Focal Mechanism Catalogs:
- 2022 - Cheng, Y., Ross, Z. E., Hauksson, E. Ben-Zion, Y: A Refined Comprehensive Earthquake Focal Mechanism Catalog for Southern California Derived with Deep Learning Algorithms (1981-2021)
- 2011 - Yang, Hauksson, and Shearer: Refined earthquake focal mechanism catalog for southern California (1981-2010) (includes 2011-2022 datasets)
- 2005 - Hardebeck: focal mechanisms from P-wave polarity and S/P amplitude ratios.
- 2000 - Hauksson: 3-D earthquake focal mechanisms
