USGS Earthquakes — GeoJSON Extractor

Live and historical earthquake data from the USGS — magnitude, place, origin time, latitude/longitude/depth, felt reports, tsunami and PAGER alert flags — as clean typed records. Official FDSN event service, no API key.

What it does

The USGS publishes every catalogued seismic event through its FDSN event service as GeoJSON. This Actor queries that service and flattens the result: the nested geometry array becomes explicit latitude, longitude and depth_km fields, and all 29 event properties come through as top-level columns.

Three ways to define the area you care about:

• country_hint — a ready-made bounding box for a seismic region (japan, usa, chile, indonesia, italy, new_zealand, turkey, or world).
• bounding_box — your own rectangle via min/max latitude and longitude.
• radius — a circle around a point, in kilometres or degrees.

Layer magnitude and time filters on top and you have anything from "significant quakes worldwide today" to "every M2+ event within 200 km of this coordinate since 2020".

Features

• Official USGS FDSN service — the authoritative catalogue, not a scraped mirror.
• Three region modes — country presets, custom bounding box, or radius around a point.
• Magnitude window — minMagnitude / maxMagnitude to isolate the band you study.
• Time window — startTime / endTime for historical research, or leave empty for recent activity.
• Flattened coordinates — latitude, longitude and depth_km as real fields, ready for mapping.
• Impact fields included — felt, cdi, mmi, alert, sig and tsunami for consequence analysis.
• High ceiling — up to 20,000 records per run for serious catalogue work.
• No API key required.

What people use it for

• Hazard and risk analysis — build a local seismic history for a site or portfolio.
• Newsroom monitoring — schedule frequent runs and alert on significant events.
• Research datasets — pull decades of events for a region into one clean table.
• Insurance and reinsurance — quantify event frequency and severity by geography.
• Dashboards and maps — flattened lat/lon/depth drops straight into GIS or a mapping library.

Reading the fields that matter

Field	Meaning
magnitude / magtype	Size, and which scale produced it (mww, mb, ml, …)
depth_km	Depth below surface — shallow quakes do far more damage than deep ones
sig	USGS significance score, combining magnitude, felt reports and impact
felt / cdi	Number of "Did You Feel It?" reports and the resulting community intensity
mmi	Modified Mercalli shaking intensity from instruments
alert	PAGER alert level: green, yellow, orange, red
tsunami	1 when the event is in a tsunami-relevant zone
status	automatic (machine solution) or reviewed (seismologist-checked)

Time filtering

startTime and endTime accept 2026-01-01 or 2026-01-01T00:00:00. Leave both empty for recent activity. Large historical windows combined with a low minMagnitude return enormous result sets — the world records thousands of small quakes weekly — so set minMagnitude deliberately and use limit as a guard.

Input

Start with mode. Only the fields belonging to your chosen mode are read, so unused coordinate fields can be left at their defaults.

Field	Type	Default	What it does
mode	string	country_hint	bounding_box = rectangle by lat/lon corners; radius = circle around a point; country_hint = preset box for a region. Options: bounding_box, radius, country_hint.
countryHint	string	japan	Used when Region mode = Country preset. Options: usa, japan, chile, indonesia, italy, new_zealand, turkey, world.
minLatitude	number	—	Southern edge. Used when Region mode = Bounding box.
minLongitude	number	—	Western edge. Used when Region mode = Bounding box.
maxLatitude	number	—	Northern edge. Used when Region mode = Bounding box.
maxLongitude	number	—	Eastern edge. Used when Region mode = Bounding box.
latitude	number	38.0	Circle center latitude. Used when Region mode = Radius.
longitude	number	142.0	Circle center longitude. Used when Region mode = Radius.
radiusKm	number	500	Circle radius in kilometers. Used when Region mode = Radius. Ignored if Radius (deg) set.
radiusDeg	number	—	Circle radius in degrees (overrides km if set). Used when Region mode = Radius.
minMagnitude	number	—	Only quakes at or above this magnitude. Leave empty for all.
maxMagnitude	number	—	Only quakes at or below this magnitude. Leave empty for all.
startTime	string	—	Earliest origin time, e.g. 2026-01-01 or 2026-01-01T00:00:00. Leave empty for recent.
endTime	string	—	Latest origin time, e.g. 2026-02-01. Leave empty for now.
orderBy	string	time	Result ordering. Options: time, magnitude, time-asc, magnitude-asc.
limit	integer	500	Cap on records returned (1-20000). Range 1–20000.
includeAllMagnitudes	boolean	false	Return deleted/automatically deleted magnitude events too.

Input example

{
  "mode": "country_hint",
  "countryHint": "japan",
  "minMagnitude": 4.5,
  "limit": 20,
  "orderBy": "time",
  "latitude": 38,
  "longitude": 142,
  "radiusKm": 500,
  "includeAllMagnitudes": false
}

Output

One record per seismic event. time and updated are epoch milliseconds (UTC); magtype tells you which magnitude scale was used; status distinguishes automatic from human-reviewed solutions.

Every dataset record contains: id, title, magnitude, place, time, updated, tz, url, detail, felt, cdi, mmi, alert, status, tsunami, sig, net, code, ids, sources, types, nst, dmin, rms, gap, magtype, latitude, longitude, depth_km.

Output example

A real record from a run of this Actor:

{
  "id": "usd0015ecj",
  "title": "M 4.6 - 3 km NNE of Takatsuki, Japan",
  "magnitude": "4.6",
  "place": "3 km NNE of Takatsuki, Japan",
  "time": "1786952179104",
  "updated": "1787040363103",
  "tz": "",
  "url": "https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usd0015ecj",
  "detail": "https://earthquake.usgs.gov/fdsnws/event/1/query?eventid=usd0015ecj&format=geojson",
  "felt": "1",
  "cdi": "1",
  "mmi": "",
  "alert": "",
  "status": "reviewed",
  "tsunami": "0",
  "sig": "326",
  "net": "us",
  "code": "d0015ecj",
  "ids": ",usd0015ecj,",
  "sources": ",us,",
  "types": ",dyfi,origin,phase-data,",
  "nst": "128"
}

Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or JSONL from the Console, or pull it programmatically through the Apify API and any of the official clients.

How to use it

1. Click Try for free (or Start if you already have an Apify account).
2. Fill in the input fields described above — the defaults already produce a working run.
3. Press Start and watch the log; results stream into the dataset as they are found.
4. When the run finishes, open the Output/Storage tab and export as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Runs can be scheduled (hourly, daily, weekly) and wired into Slack, Google Sheets, Zapier, Make, webhooks or your own backend through Apify integrations. Everything the Console does is also available over the Apify API.

Pricing

This Actor is billed on Apify's pay-per-event model: a small charge when a run starts, plus a charge for each result written to the dataset. You only pay for records you actually receive — a run that finds nothing costs only the start event. Current rates are always shown on the Pricing tab of this page, and the run log prints your usage as it goes.

Free-plan credits from Apify cover a large amount of light usage, so you can evaluate the Actor before committing to anything.

FAQ

Is this real-time?

It queries the live USGS catalogue, so events appear as USGS publishes them — typically within minutes for automatic solutions. Schedule the Actor every few minutes for monitoring; note that early records are automatic and magnitudes get revised when a human reviews them.

Why do timestamps look like large integers?

USGS returns epoch milliseconds in UTC, and the Actor passes them through unchanged rather than guessing at your timezone. Convert with datetime.utcfromtimestamp(time/1000) in Python or new Date(time) in JavaScript.

How far back does the catalogue go?

Coverage extends to historical events, with completeness improving sharply from the 1970s onward as instrumentation spread. Small-magnitude completeness varies by region and era — mind that before computing long-run rates.

What magnitude should I filter on?

M4.5+ is a good default for globally newsworthy events, M2.5+ for regional monitoring, and no filter only for tight local boxes. Below M2.5 the catalogue is dominated by instrument-only microseismicity.

Can I get one specific event by ID?

This version is query-driven by region, magnitude and time. Every record includes url and detail links to the USGS event page and its GeoJSON, so a single event is one hop away.

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Legal and responsible use

This Actor collects only publicly available information. You are responsible for how you use the data, including compliance with the target site's Terms of Service, robots directives, copyright, and data protection law such as GDPR and CCPA. Do not use it to gather personal data without a lawful basis.

Support and feedback

Found a bug, hit a site change, or need an extra field? Open a ticket on the Issues tab of this Actor — issues are read and fixed. Feature requests and custom-scraper enquiries are welcome through the same channel.