Earthquakes & seismic hazard
Earthquakes as data from USGS: Gutenberg-Richter b-values and recurrence, ShakeMap stations and Did You Feel It? reports, ground motion against distance, faults, plate boundaries, focal mechanisms, slab depth, hazard curves and maps, and the unit, time and distance traps.
Earthquakes are among the best-documented natural hazards: the USGS catalogue lists every significant event worldwide, each large one comes with a ShakeMap, thousands of Did You Feel It? reports and a moment tensor, and the national hazard model can be queried for any point in the country. The guides here turn that into numbers: b-values and recurrence probabilities, shaking against distance, faults and plate boundaries, focal mechanisms, slab geometry, hazard curves, disaggregation and exposure maps, and the unit, time and distance traps that catch everyone once.
Every number comes from a run. The Ridgecrest M7.1 was felt 744 km away; its strongest recording was 56.9% of g; Oklahoma went from 1.4 M3+ earthquakes a year to 887 in 2015 and back down; and the three largest earthquakes of 2000 to 2024 released 46% of the seismic moment of all 12,334 M5.5+ events, which is what a b-value of 1.03 implies.
🧭 Start with the concepts
The ideas the how-to guides below assume you already have.
⚙️ Then do the task
Step-by-step walkthroughs with code you can copy and adapt.
- How to Estimate the Probability of an Earthquake from a Catalogue in Python
- How to Map "Did You Feel It?" Earthquake Intensity Reports in Python
- How to Compare ShakeMap Station Data with the Grid in Python
- How to Fit Ground-Motion Attenuation to ShakeMap Stations in Python
- How to Analyse the USGS Quaternary Fault Database in Python
- How to Draw an Earthquake Depth Cross-Section in Python
Show every how-to guide in this topic
🔧 When it breaks
The errors this topic produces, with the cause explained rather than just the command.
- Fixing a Gutenberg-Richter b-Value That Comes Out Too Low
- Fixing Peak Ground Acceleration Values That Are 100 Times Too Large
- Fixing Distances to Faults That Come Out in Degrees or Too Long
- Fixing USGS Earthquake Times That Show Up as 1970
- Fixing Earthquake Maps and Statistics Split at the Antimeridian
Related topics
Subjects that keep coming up alongside this one, most overlap first.