SeismoArchives

| |
Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology

| | | | |

Seismogram Archives of Significant Earthquakes of the World

Project Archives

Introduction

The purpose of these archives by projects is to preserve scanned seismograms created by some special projects. The scanned image files will be searchable by some simple queries, and related materials will be available to aid the users. Seismograms will be downloadable (in originally scanned resolution) from the IRIS Data Management Center.

Volunteers and financial donors are welcome. Please contact William H.K. Lee at: lee@usgs.gov.

1. The USGS WWFC Pilot Scanning Project

The World Wide Standardized Seismograph Network (WWSSN) began operations in 1961. One hundred twenty stations were installed, covering every continent. A station consisted of 3 short-period and 3 long-period seismometers, recording apparatus, radio-synchronized crystal clock, and calibration controls.

Data were originally recorded on photographic paper, then later on heat sensitive paper. The original records were photographed at the WWSSN Data Center using 70 mm film and stored by station and year on a 70 x 120 mm film chip. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the USGS Albuquerque Seismological Laboratory (ASL) each hold near-complete film chip sets of the WWSSN data. The slow degradation of these film chips has prompted this pilot project in 1999.

The film chips are black and white and have been digitally scanned with a resolution of 3200 dpi. The image has been cropped to exclude areas on the film chip which do not contain the image of the original record, however in all cases, the final product contains all of the original photographed record. The resulting grey-scale images have been saved at approximately 1/10th of the original film chip size as TIF files and then compressed using gzip. Enlarging the images by a factor of 10 results in images similar in size to the original analog record.

Use the Searchable Product Archive to find scanned seismograms

2. IASPEI Seismogram, Seismic Station Bulletin, and Marigram Scanning Projects

IASPEI sponsored projects were undertaken to scan original seismograms, station bulletins and copy marigram images.

Seismograms of the Reference station SJP were scanned at 500dpi, grayscale and are found in the reference station section of seismoarchives.
Station bulletins from the US Coast and Geodetic Survey Magnetic Observatory Seismological Reports for VQS, CHL, TUC, HON, and SIT and held at the library of the National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colorado were scanned to complete seismic bulletin sets not already scanned or on microfilm. Those images are available here:
- Cheltenham, Maryland (CHL, 1904-1924) (Cheltenham_1905-1924.pdf)
- Honolulu, Hawaii (HON, 1921-1924) (Honolulu_1921-1924.pdf)
- San Juan, Puerto Rico: SJP, 1926-1928 (San_Juan_1926-1928.pdf), 1929-1930 (San_Juan_1929-1930.pdf), 1946 (San_Juan_1946.pdf)
- Sitka, Alaska (SIT, 1921-1924) (Sitka_1921-1924.pdf)
- Tucson, Arizona (TUC, 1909-1924) (Tucson_1909-1924.pdf)
- Vieques, Puerto Rico (VQS, 1903-1924) (Vieques_1903-1924.pdf)
- Several bulletins from non-US stations were also scanned. They are from Argentina, Apia in Western Samoa, and Mauritius.
- Argentina (1921-1923) (Argentina_1921-1923.pdf)
- Apia, Western Samoa (1921-1937) (Apia_1921-1937.pdf)
- Mauritius (1900-1909) (Mauritius_1900-1909.pdf)
Several thousand marigram images, many containing records of tsunami, were copied from DVDs held at the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) in Boulder, Colorado to be made available here. A very useful NGDC website linking these data to the NGDC tsunami database are here:
   http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/nndc/struts/form?t=102890&s=3&d=3
At this site you can search marigrams, find links to event information, and connects with National Geophysical Data Center tsunami event database maintained by Paula Dunbar.
Images were originally scanned at 600 dpi grayscale. A table containing station name, station coordinates (when available), date of marigram image, and NDGC DVD number is available here:
   Link to marigram DVD List (Excel .xls file; marigram_DVD_list.xls)

3. Scans of the Caltech Archive

This directory contains images of seismograms formally stored by the Caltech in the Kresge Seismological Laboratory, Pasadena CA. The images are a subset of the approximately 1 million paper records accumulated from 1928 through the mid-1980’s. The images were scanned in 2009-2010 by Google in collaboration with UC Santa Cruz as part of the Google Books project. Scans include fronts and backs of the paper records and are organized into directories that each corresponds to an individual box in which the records were originally stored at Kresge. The goal of this electronic library of seismograms is to allow users to simulate the experience of going to the paper archives and flipping through a box to find a record. The organization is imperfect and the search engine non-existent, but the original records are now as accessible to the world-wide user group as they once were to a small group of California seismologists.