link to Home Page

USGS Explains
Live Seismo vs Quake Database

From: Lisa Wald 
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 8:50 AM
Subject: Re: Siesmo Info

Hello-

Without having seen the seismograms that you were looking at, I can only guess 
that perhaps the signals that you thought were earthquakes were really some 
other type of "noise" such as a local source (trucks, train, animal, etc) or 
from communication disturbances (static). A seismic signal has to be recorded 
on a certain minimum number of seismic stations to be declared a possible 
earthquake by the automatic system. If it is declared a possible earthquake, 
then it is further evaluated to make sure it is not regional noise, or a quarry 
blast, sonic boom, or some other type of source. If it is really an earthquake, 
it is then located and recorded in the archive. 

Hope this helps.

-Lisa
--------------------------
Lisa Wald
USGS Earthquake Hazards Program
Golden, CO
------------------------------------------------------

On 6/16/03 9:12 PM, Angel wrote:

> How come the quakes that are registering on the live siesmograph page like
> Florida are not on the list?