Microproduct data guidebeginner

USGS Earthquake Catalog

Continuously updated earthquake locations, magnitudes, depths, timestamps, and review status for monitoring seismic activity and spatial patterns.

Start the guide Open official source

At a glance

Difficulty
Beginner — comfortable for a first prototype
Size
Medium · ≤1 GB
Formats
GeoJSON, CSV, KML, QuakeML
Access
Download or API
API key
Not required
Provider
U.S. Geological Survey
Updates
Continuous
Data terms
U.S. Public Domain / USGS CC0 guidance

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

The USGS Event Web Service provides current and historical earthquake records through bounded queries. Start with a recent seven-day window that is small enough to inspect in one notebook. Conclusions from that short, changing sample should not be treated as long-term seismic trends.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • An internet connection
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Open the official API documentation and review its query parameters and limits.
  2. 2.Request GeoJSON for a recent seven-day window.
  3. 3.Record the seven-day query window and note when you ran the analysis.
Open official source
3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas requests

from datetime import date, timedelta
import pandas as pd
import requests

end = date.today()
start = end - timedelta(days=7)
response = requests.get(
    "https://earthquake.usgs.gov/fdsnws/event/1/query",
    params={"format": "geojson", "starttime": start, "endtime": end},
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()
earthquakes = pd.json_normalize(response.json()["features"])
print(earthquakes[["properties.mag", "properties.place", "properties.time"]].head())
4

Test a useful signal

Profile the past week's earthquakes

Describe where earthquakes were recorded during the last seven days and how their reported magnitudes were distributed.

  1. 01Convert event timestamps from milliseconds to UTC datetimes.
  2. 02Plot the magnitude distribution and map events with magnitude 4 or greater.
  3. 03Summarize the strongest reported event and explain why a seven-day sample cannot establish a long-term trend.

Dataset details

U.S. Geological Survey is a government source. Last verified 2026-08-10. Temporal coverage: 1900-present.

Domains

SeismologyNatural HazardsEarth Science

Data types

GeospatialEvent DataTime Series

Tasks

Hazard MonitoringSpatial AnalysisTrend Analysis

Geography

Global

Formats

GeoJSONCSVKMLQuakeML

Provider

U.S. Geological Survey

Data terms

U.S. Public Domain / USGS CC0 guidance