Live EarthQuake Monitors – Data, Maps and Realtime Info

The Exploratorium brings us live earthquake monitor and mapping links! Normally I wouldn’t cut an paste so much info but in light of messages I’ve received from mariners worried about their families, here it is:

Southern California Integrated GPS Network Mapsurfer
Mapsurferer is an interactive mapping system that allows visitors to overlay different layers of information on a map of California. These layers include seismic stations, highways, geological features, major faults, and more. While information about the Bay Area and northern California is available, this map focuses on southern parts of the state.

Quakes in the last 7 days: USGS Earthquake Hazards Program
The USGS has many maps of live earthquake data. This section lets visitors see quakes that have occurred anywhere in the world in the last week. You can also focus on geographic regions. Zooming in to a specific quake, you reach a page with specific data and links to the area’s seimic and quake damage history

Shake map of California and Nevada showing fault lines
These maps are nice illustrations of the fact that earthquakes occur along faults. You can click the small boxes to zoom in and get more details on specific quakes

Did you feel it?
Seismometers can measure shaking, but how much does that reflect what people actually feel? On this site, people in the area of a quake can report their experiences to the USGS, and the results are made into a map. This can be compared with other shake maps for the same quake that were generated from seismometer data.

IRIS Seismic Monitor
IRIS (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology) has developed their Seismic Monitor that offers data about quake in near realtime, lets you search the Web for information about them, and view seismograms.

Real-time seismograms
Recorded by stations in the Northern California Seismic Network, these seismograms update every 5 minutes. The site also includes information on interpreting seismograms and examples of different magnitudes.

USGS Global Positioning System (GPS) monitors
USGS keeps many live earthquake monitoring stations that track movements of the earth’s plates using GPS. Because plate movement is fairly slow, the data are recorded over long periods of time. So the information on this site records events in the last year, or last decade, rather than the last week.