In addition to displaying earthquakes by magnitude, this service also provide earthquake impact details. Impact is measured by population as well as models for economic and fatality loss. For more details, see: PAGER Alerts.
Consumption Best Practices:
As a service that is subject to very high usage, ensure peak performance and accessibility of your maps and apps by avoiding the use of non-cache-able relative Date/Time field filters. To accommodate filtering events by Date/Time, we suggest using the included "Age" fields that maintain the number of days or hours since a record was created or last modified, compared to the last service update. These queries fully support the ability to cache a response, allowing common query results to be efficiently provided to users in a high demand service environment.
When ingesting this service in your applications, avoid using POST requests whenever possible. These requests can compromise performance and scalability during periods of high usage because they too are not cache-able.
Update Frequency: Events are updated as frequently as every 5 minutes and are available up to 30 days with the following exceptions:
Events with a Magnitude LESS than 4.5 are retained for 7 days
Events with a Significance value, 'sig' field, of 600 or higher are retained for 90 days
In addition to event points, ShakeMaps are also provided. These have been dissolved by Shake Intensity to reduce the Layer Complexity.
The specific layers provided in this service have been Time Enabled and include:
Events by Magnitude: The event’s seismic magnitude value.
Contains PAGER Alert Level: USGS PAGER (Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response) system provides an automated impact level assignment that estimates fatality and economic loss.
Contains Significance Level: An event’s significance is determined by factors like magnitude, max MMI, ‘felt’ reports, and estimated impact.
Shake Intensity: The Instrumental Intensity or Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) for available events.
For field terms and technical details, see: ComCat Documentation
Alternate Symbologies
Visit the Classic USGS Feature Layer item for a Rainbow view of Shakemap features.
Revisions
Feb 13, 2024: Updated feed logic to remove Superseded events
This map is provided for informational purposes and is not monitored 24/7 for accuracy and currency. Always refer to USGS source for official guidance.
If you would like to be alerted to potential issues or simply see when this Service will update next, please visit our Live Feed Status Page.