The Transportable Array component of the USArray/EarthScope project is a rolling array of 400 broadband stations deployed on a uniform 70-km grid (current map). This very large aperture array is well suited to visualize seismic waves crossing the contiguous United States. The USArray Ground Motion Visualization (GMV) videos below illustrate how seismic waves from large earthquakes sweep across this array by depicting the recorded wave amplitudes at each seismometer location using colored circles. The color of each circle represents the amplitude of the ground motion as detected by the station’s seismometer and it changes as waves of differing amplitude travel past the seismometer. Blue circles represent downward ground motion while the red circles represent upward ground motions with the darker colors indicating larger amplitudes. A random representative trace is displayed on the lower part of the animation with its horizontal axis representing the time (in seconds) after the event. Location of the representative station is marked on the map by a yellow circle. Click here for more information on the USArray Ground Motion Visualizations or read the IRIS DMS Newsletter article on this subject.

Click on the fields at the top of the table to sort, click on a video link to view the corresponding visualization video and click on the Date-Time link for additional information.