Department of Geosciences
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA
GEOPHYSICS
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Department of Geosciences
113 Ozark Hall
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, AR 72701
479.575.7134 (VOX)
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E-mail: sboss@uark.edu
USGS Earthquake Hazards Program >> National Earthquake Information Center - NEIC -- This site has a tremendous amount of information on earthquakes, both American and worldwide, including a searchable catalogue of earthquake info (location, magnitude, depth, time, focal mechanisms, and much more) that's updated multiple times per day. Data can be downloaded in many formats (CSV, GIS formats, spreadsheets) to suit many needs (such as plotting regional seismicity to infer a Benioff zone or delineate areas of active rifting). Other information of a more historical/subjective nature (damage reports, etc.) can be found for many larger events.
USDOC/NOAA/NESDIS/National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) Homepage -- This page possibly contains the largest and most diverse group of geophysical data on the internet (it's certainly the largest I've come across). It has land, marine, satellite, snow and ice, and solar-terrestrial data in many formats, from plain text files to maps and GIS files to pdf files. Most of this is available via ftp. This is the most likely starting point for finding any non-exploration geophysical data.
INETER -- This is the page of the Nicaraguan Institute for Earth Studies (Instituto Nicaraguense de Estudios Territoriales). They have a variety of data available, mostly seismograms (in GIF format) and spectrograms from tectonic and volcanic sites throughout the country.
Geomagnetism data -- From the Geological Survey of Canada. Available data include daily values for B, dB/dt, geoelectric field, magnetic activity indices, and more, for all the Canadian magnetic observatories. Data are typically delivered in graphs (JPEG) of mag values vs. time for each day. Useful for anyone interested in Canada’s magnetic field (and who’s not?).
SOPAC Data Archive -- All sorts of geodetic data and information from the Scripps Orbit and Permanent Array Center. Archive is searchable by site (and there’s a worldwide network), date, region, etc. Also available is software for the viewing of RINEX and raw GPS data, which can be somewhat hard to handle
Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network -- This site contains information about the seismicity in Washington State and Oregon. It can be used to access information about recent seismic activity in this part of the world as well as significant past events. It also allows has a volcanoes page that allows a user to view and seismic histories of volcanoes in the region including GPS coordinates of related earthquake events.
USGS Natural Hazards Observatory -- This website enables users to view remotely sensed views of volcanic eruptions, of both contemporary events as well as some on archive. Many of the events have multiple images which would enable a user to track an ash plume, and also make at least rough estimates of the volume of ash from the eruption. It also contains links to similar images of other natural hazards which could have similar uses.
Jet Propulsion Lab - MISR -- This is NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory site for the MISR mission which is a multi angle viewing instrument. It allows for detailed atmospheric studies which can include topics like the strengthening of a storm or aerosols being emitted from a volcano. It also allows for land cover studies as well, or surface water hydrology. The instrument itself is satellite mounted and has 9 cameras operating simultaneously in 4 bandwidths.
CORS -- This is the CORS continuous GPS stations site. This site allows you to download GPS information from permanent sites all over the United States to be used to correct measured GPS coordinates that you may have on a project, or even for some use where you may be comparing relative motion of a variety of points for which there are already sites set up (plate motion, etc.). Downloads go back to the mid 90’s for some of these sites.
UCSD Earthquake Observatory -- This is a University of California at San Diego site that monitors worldwide seismicity offering magnitudes of events and solutions for the hypocenters of these quakes. It offers a variety of map scales from a local Southern California focused map to global, as well as regional maps of other areas of seismic interest. It provides the user with a very extensive list of earthquake magnitudes, times and hypocenters on a global scale but, also very high resolution detail for this information in more finite areas.
Geophysical Surveys of Bear Lake, Utah-Idaho, September 2002, USGS Open-File Report 03-150, Seismic Profiles -- This site is maintained by the USGS but this link takes you directly to the USGS geophysical study of Bear Lake, Utah-Idaho. On this site there is a variety of seismic reflection images that show the seismic profiles of the Bear Lake area. The seismic images or lines can be accessed by clicking on the above link then clicking on the particular image that one wants. This would be a great exercise to correlate signatures in the reflections as well as intemperate faults and other deformation.
Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission -- This link above is tot the Arkansas oil and Gas Commission. On this site the geophysical data is in two places. The first is a link at the top of the main page that shows the Fayetteville shale well production on a GIS map. More valuable is the availability of all of the general well data for the state of Arkansas. This includes Lat Long locations in the state. To access the data click on the link, "Current Updated Gas Production Now Available Via Online Well Database!". After clicking on this it will bring you to a window and you must wait for the interactive database to load. Once this has loaded one can search for a bulk amount of wells and extrapolate the information, either for lat long or depth, to excel format. This would be a good project to locate the wells in Arkansas by plotting the total number of depths in excel or even using the excel data to extrapolate a map showing the distribution of the wells by lat long.
Ocean Drilling Program Janus Web Database -- This website is maintained through Texas A&M University. On this website there is marine geosciences data that was collected on the JOIDES Resolution. This site includes lithologic, palentological, biological, and geophysical data sets. Accessible data includes, images that display the distribution of the KT boundary or magnetic anomalies in the form of images as well as extrapolatable data in excel. As a project click on the above link, then click on the link that says Database Overview. At this point one can query data for particular wells that includes geophysical tools such as densities, magnetism, or locations.
The Distribution of Earthquakes -- This website is a site that allows you to access the distribution of earthquakes in the California and Nevada area through a interactive animation. To access this data click on the above link and then click on the link that says Recent Earthquakes in California maps. After clicking there a animation will come up that shows the distribution of the earthquakes. Click on the animation and a data set for that area will come up that shows a listing of each quake, its date, magnitude, depth, as well as its lat long location. This site could be a potential exercise by using the extrapolated data to determine frequency or periods of the waves associated with these quakes.
Tsunamis -- The geographical information on this website has been collected via remote sensing equipment placed on the surface of the ocean and on the sea bed. Also available are past Tsunami locations, and various other data. An interesting project would be to try and determine the best places to set up remote sensing equipment for different regions of the world. We could then overlay a plot of these, with a tectonic maps and or known fault lines, to try and identify/confirm correlations between plate boundaries and Tsunami generation regions.
Earthquakes (1) -- This web site contains many different sets of information regarding earthquakes since around the nineteen hundreds. A possible lab could be to compile all this information onto one big spread sheet and to plot the frequency with location. An interesting question to look at would be to try and establish how earthquakes effect economy in the affected area by finding economic data for these regions.
Earthquakes (2) -- This link is the search page to the national geophysical data center. This page allows us to search all earth quake intensities from 1638 onwards. This information can be used in the same way as the above earthquake data, only this time we have much more data at our fingertips.
Global Population -- This data set is available to download from the web site above. This data breaks down each country into grids, then each grids population is showed, along with the grids percentage of the total population for that country. This data represents that from around the year 1990. An interesting lab would be to see how each grids population evolved over time. Such things as economic growth; natural disasters and other things of that nature could also be compiled by separate people, and then compared to see the impact if any on population numbers and growth. Note, you must submit a “purpose of use” each time you want to download this data.
Volcanic Activity -- The Volcano Database is a global listing of over 1500 volcanoes which includes information on the latitude, longitude, elevation, type of volcano, and last known eruption.” (Quoted directly from the web site) It goes as far back as the 1800’s. We could use this information for example to plot the frequency of volcanic activity as a function of location and time.
Parkfield, CA -- shows how geophysical data and surficial geology are being used to construct a 3-D digital model. This page was found within the USGS official website. Gives an excellent example of how different geophysical data such as isostatic gravity maps, aeromagnetic maps, ground magnetic maps, along with seismic reflection and refraction data are all used together to create a 3-D model.
Space Gravity -- shows a gravity anomaly map for Earth along with a color scale (mGal). This data could be compared to other maps showing such things as topography, plate boundaries, or seismic activity, and most likely a correlation could be found.
IRIS Seismic Monitor -- This site gives an up-to-date account of worldwide seismic activity along with a magnitude scale. This information could be plotted in a number of different ways, or it could also be paired with other maps to find correlations with other data.
Great Lakes Bathymetry -- This page provides the latest compilation of bathymetry for the Great Lakes. The main site is the National Geophysical Data Center, or http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov . It has tons of marine geology/geophysics data and information. This page with the Great Lakes would perhaps be helpful for someone looking to study the underwater geology or topography of the Great Lakes.
IRIS U.S. Array Records -- This figure shows data from the magnitude 5.1 June 15th 2004 earthquake in Baja California. Data is provided by the USArray component of the EarthScope experiment. Shown are three different seismogram plots with different filters that show a distance/time relationship. Many other events are available on their main website, http://www.iris.edu/USArray.