FDSN Seismic Extractor

Point this Actor at any seismic data center and pull earthquakes or station metadata out through the FDSN web services standard — no per-center scraper. Every seismic data center on Earth (USGS, INGV, GEOFON, EarthScope/IRIS, SCEDC, NCEDC, GeoNet, EMSC, ISC, AusPass, and more) exposes the identical /fdsnws/event/1/query and /fdsnws/station/1/query endpoints, and the official fdsn.org datacenter registry self-describes all 31 of them — so one Actor covers the whole federation.

Three modes, chosen automatically from your input

1. Discovery — map the federation

Leave Data center and Service URL empty (or turn on List data centers only) and the Actor maps the fdsn.org registry — one row per (data center, service) with the center's full name, website, and live event/station service URL. Use it first to discover valid center names.

{ "listCentersOnly": true }

2. Event — query earthquakes

Set Data center to a name (USGS), a comma-list (INGV,GEOFON,EMSC), or all, add the standard FDSN parameters, and the Actor returns one flat row per event plus a lossless _raw object.

{ "dataService": "event", "center": "USGS", "starttime": "2024-01-01", "endtime": "2024-01-03", "minMagnitude": "5" }

3. Station — query network / station / channel metadata

Switch Data service to station, choose a level, and filter by network / station / channel codes or a geographic area.

{ "dataService": "station", "center": "IRIS", "network": "IU", "station": "ANMO", "level": "channel" }

How it stays generic

The FDSN text format is uniform across centers, but a few rename or reorder columns (SCEDC ships a Longtitude typo and slash-dates; station columns differ by level). The Actor parses each response's # header column by column, so every center is read correctly and every original column is preserved verbatim in _raw. Events can optionally be fetched as GeoJSON (richer per-event properties from centers like USGS and INGV).

Input

Field	Description
dataService	event (earthquakes) or station (metadata). Default event.
center	Data center name(s) from the fdsn.org registry — one, a comma-list, or all. Common aliases work (iris, usgs, ingv, geofon…). Leave empty for discovery.
serviceUrl	Advanced: point directly at a center's FDSN endpoint (or bare host) and bypass the registry.
listCentersOnly	Discovery-only switch — map the registry without querying.
level	Station service only: network, station, channel, or response.
format	Event output: text (uniform) or geojson (richer). Station is always text.
starttime / endtime	Time window (ISO 8601). A bare date is expanded to T00:00:00.
minMagnitude / maxMagnitude	Magnitude bounds (event).
minLatitude / maxLatitude / minLongitude / maxLongitude	Bounding-box search.
latitude / longitude / maxRadius / minRadius	Radial search.
minDepth / maxDepth	Depth bounds in km (event).
network / station / location / channel	Code filters (station); comma-lists and * ? wildcards supported.
orderBy	Event sort order (time, magnitude, …).
maxRecords	Max total records across all queried centers (default 1000). Each record is one billable event.
extraParams	Any additional FDSN query parameters as a JSON object, passed straight through.
bearerToken / extraHeaders	Optional auth for gated deployments. Never logged.

Output

Every record shares a stable, fully-declared set of fields — _dataService, _center, _serviceUrl, _level, _rowIndex — plus mode-specific data and a lossless _raw:

• Event records carry eventId, time, latitude, longitude, depthKm, magnitude, magType, magAuthor, author, catalog, eventLocationName, eventType.
• Station records carry network, station, location, channel, siteName, elevation, depth, azimuth, dip, sensorDescription, scale, sampleRate, startTime, endTime (fields populated depend on level).
• Discovery rows carry serviceType, centerFullName, centerWebsite, centerSummary and the service URL.

Pricing

Pay-per-event: one record charge per emitted row (an event, a station/channel, or a discovery row). You pay only for what you extract.

Notes

• A query that matches nothing (HTTP 204, or a header-only body) returns 0 records and exits cleanly — the Actor never fabricates rows.
• Parameters are not perfectly uniform across centers: GeoNet rejects limit; some centers want a full ISO datetime. The Actor normalizes bare dates and, in multi-center mode, skips a center that rejects the query (surfacing its own error) so one strict center never fails the whole run.
• Binary waveform data (dataselect / miniSEED) is intentionally out of scope — this Actor returns event and station metadata only.
• Public centers need no credentials. bearerToken / extraHeaders cover key-gated deployments and are never logged.