The United States Geological Survey (USGS) operates an Earthquake Hazards Program that provides several alternative ways to obtain real-time, worldwide earthquake lists extracted from a merged catalog of earthquakes located by the USGS and contributing networks.



Amongst these methods is Google Earth KML. Visit the data catalog page, select the KML source of interest to you, and then click on the link to see the many events in situ worldwide.

M > 1 earthquakes, past 7 days

M > 2.5 earthquakes, past 7 days

These links provided for the impatient but it is better to visit the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program website for the latest news and for the color-code key that you will need to understand the data layer.

Want to build a service like this for the millions of Google Earth users? Check the KML Discussion forum and code.google.com for easy to follow instructions and source code.

One more real cool data layer !!!
Great !

It's a good thing that such a site uses Google Earth technology

Great Work! Fascinating information.

I was just wondering why this (the current earthquake data from USGS) isn't just added as an optional layer like the other ("historical" earthquake data) that's already provided by GE?
---Edit:
I forgot to mention, has anybody noticed anything odd about this lake in southern California when the USGS layer is on? A lot of earthquakes in one spot.

Check out this link:

http://www.cisn.org/

Thanks Mad Matt! Set VIEW, LAN-LON = ON.

Remember that the "fault zone" --- the entire plate boundary, even though it may be called different things along the way and underwater and function a bit differently --- runs from northwest of San Francisco to the tip of the Baja peninnsula. In the Pacific Ocean above the bay area, the Juan de Fuca plate joins the fray ... along with the Pacific plate grinding slowly Northward against the North American plate. Hence the entire Baja peninnsula was once quite a bit further south, will someday be near San Francisco and all that grinding has also resulted in vertical terrain shifts around the Salton Sea. It ws at once time connected to the Sea of Cortez.

Buy your ocean-front property in Palm Springs soon! Mount San Jacinto will become another channel island.

The following links are EXCELLENT Salton Sea links geologic histories of this fascinating area, since plate tectonics & earthquakes & volcanoes & rivers caring their way to the sea are all realted ... Salton Sea History ... Salton Basin-Colorado Delta Mother Site

After yesterday's 7.6 in Pakistan, i thought this thread needed a bump

Anybody else getting an error when the kml tries to load at start? It was working until one day it started giving me an error in line 4, I think.