Having spent a little time in California, it always surprised me to hear how just about everyone who has lived here for an extended time has experienced an earthquake at some point or another. Considering that I grew up in South Florida earthquakes were never a direct concern, but now that I have spent a little time in the Bay Area I was curious about areas that have recently been affected by earthquakes, and San Francisco in particular.
One of the guys I work with, Kevin, regularly loads weekly updated data into Finder! from the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) data catalog about earthquake magnitudes. The data includes recorded magnitudes of 1 or greater from earthquakes around the world. I put together the following map that shows the the Bay Area where a small earthquake was recorded in the Pacific Ocean off of the west coast of San Francisco in the past week.
Click the map to view in Maker!
Something else I added in the aforementioned map is a layer of hazardous zones in San Francisco where liquefaction can happen as a result of an earthquake. Liquefaction and landslides can happen when a confined layer of sandy or silty saturated material is knocked loose from the shaking caused by earthquakes. This warrants serious concern in San Francisco and surrounding areas because much of residential areas are built on the hilly geography.
If you zoom out on the above map or click the follow map below you can see where other areas around the world have recorded earthquakes with a magnitude of 1 or greater in the past week:
Click map to view in Maker! Click to view dataset in Finder!
3 Responses to Dataset of the Day: Earthquakes and Liquefaction in San Francisco
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I recently was at the Natural History Museum in DC where they have live earth quake coverage all over the world. It was fascinating to see that at any given moment there were many earthquakes occurring. I had no idea! – Arlie Jarels
Indeed @Arlie – the earth truly behaves like a living, breathing creature. Shifting in it’s skin. It’s unfortunate some of the outcomes, but also good to know that we are getting better at tracking and alerting.
It seems that so many populous areas are on fault lines. It is great you are getting better are alerting, but that can only do so much that can help. Especially on an island like Japan where there is really no place to go. In CA, at least people can head to AZ.