Quake Hunter v0.3.2.2
Developed at NASA Ames Research Center
with the WorldWind Development Team.
Powered by the USGS Earthquake API.
This is an earthquake visualization app built in NASA Web World Wind with support from the USGS Innovation Center for Earth Science. Given the wealth of USGS information on historic earthquakes, we designed and built an app that can aggregate and display nearly 100 years of seismic data dynamically.
Quake Hunter is a valuable tool for understanding how tectonic plates interact with one another. Quake Hunter visualizes any range of earthquake data from the USGS, in 3D, either on the whole planet or in a user-defined geographically constrained area. With powerful querying tools, this application provids exactly what the user wants to see in terms of earthquake event data around the world.
Querying Earthquakes:
- Tour the events using the bottom two arrow buttons. Change how you tour the earthquakes, either by magnitude or time by selecting the color mode in the controls menu.
- Use the 'from' and 'to' calendar fill-ins to change the date range of the earthquakes visualized (this can be done all the way back to 1925).
- The magnitude slider allows you to filter how large the earthquakes being visualized are.
- Use the 'draw' function to draw rectangles or circles to geographically constrain the query on earthquake events.
- Search a radius of a specific location. Try Kodiak, Alaska! (57.7900, -152.4072)
- The app should automatically generate a visualization of earthquake event hypocenters.
- The reset button reverts the earthquakes displayed to the initial query.
- Try a geographically constrained query along a subduction zone or fault line (These are represented by the brown lines).
- Set a specific sector of the planet to query earthquakes within.
- Visualize a longer period of earthquakes (>20 years) and within the magnitude range M3-10.
- Use the canvas controls (in the bottom left-hand corner) to change the angle of viewing. This should provide a great visualization of how the tectonic plates interact with one another, whether in a subduction zone, transform fault, rift zone, or a hotspot.
- Browse through the statistics of your query in the right hand side information and graphs panel. Magnitude and depth histograms, as well an earthquake activity time series graphs are all automatically generated from your query.
- You can download these graphs by clicking the camera button in the upper right hand corner of the graph plot area.
Preformance Tips:
- If the earthquakes are not loading immediately after you enter search parameters, it may be loading. Look in the "Globe Options" to see if the "earthquakes" layer is loading. If the search involves in excess of 5000 earthquakes, the load may take a while.
- If you continually run into performance issues, consider using Google Chrome or Apple Safari to run the web app.
- Try removing the tectonic plate layer for improved browsing speeds in the app.
- Consider limiting the earthquake event search to less than 2000 events for quicker load times
- For larger queries, the performance greatly improves if searches are geographically constrained. To do this, use the drawing tool to limit where earthquakes are shown.
More:
Please visit our sister apps also built on NASA World Wind!
- SpaceBirds: a satellite tracker and orbit visualizer
- WorldWeather: a GIS data aggregator and visualization tool
Source NASA World Wind
App Developers:
Gabriel Militão
& Benjamin Chang
Search Options:
Date Range:
From:
To:
Magnitude Range
5.3 to 7 Richter
Depth Range
0 to 1000 KM
Surface Opacity
% opacity
Color Mode:
Limit Displayed Events
Globe Options:
Projection
Layers
Destination
Drawing Mode:
How To:
To use the drawing mode, choose from the drop down how you would like to select the earthquakes, and double click on the globe to begin drawing. Double click again to end drawing.
To remove the outline of your drawing, go to "Globe Options" and remove the "Drawing" layer.
To clear the drawing, click the reset button on the navigation bar.
Radius Search:
Right click on the globe or fill in.
Coordinates:
Radius (km):
Search Summary
Number of Eathquakes:
Start Date:
End Date:
Min Magnitude:
Max Magnitude:
Min Depth: km
Max Depth: km
Earthquake Event Info
Magnitude:
Location:
Date:
Latitude:
Longitude:
Depth (km):
Drawn Region Info
Drawn Min Latitude:
Drawn Max Latitude:
Drawn Min Longitude:
Drawn Max Longitude:
Origin Latitude:
Origin Longitude:
Drawn Radius:
| Magnitude |  |
|
|
|
| 0 - 3 | 3 - 5 | 5 - 7 | 7 - 10 | |
| Age | ||||
| < 10% | < 30% | < 60% | 100% |
