3 ms·

Earthquakes with Exaggerated Depth

50 points by pps 5y ago

GrumpyNl 5y ago
Nice visualization but when you rotate or zoom the earthquakes dont move.
- eganist 5y ago
  works fine (though extremely slow) for me on current firefox on windows 10
fghorow 5y ago
Nice! I'm going to use (and cite) that idea of plotting only the country outlines on the continents!
jofer 5y ago
Always interesting to see almost the exact same visualization independently appear and reappear over the decades. This is really similar to a standard teaching visualization back in the late 90's-early 2000's (complete with stereo glasses). It was in turn sourced from mid-90's era SGI visualizations. I'm pretty sure it's older than that, as there are similar figures in a few papers and textbooks from the 80's, but I started doing all of this (i.e. visualizing geophysical data) in the early 2000's, so that's as far back as I really know. I'm pretty sure I have a vrml or openinventor file of a near identical visualization around somewhere... Country outlines and all, with an optional "inner globe" so that you didn't see through to the other side. It used to be a standard demo that came with one of the stereo-capable VRML viewers that was commonly used in "geowall" setups. (Immersaview, maybe?) Here we go... Things like this: https://www.evl.uic.edu/aspale/writing/immersaview-documentation/readme.html https://www.evl.uic.edu/aspale/writing/immersaview-documenta... and specifically https://www.evl.uic.edu/aspale/writing/immersaview-documentation/quakesGlobe.jpg https://www.evl.uic.edu/aspale/writing/immersaview-documenta... (Side-by-side view is for dual-screen stereographic 3D setups - usually two projectors with different polarization filters focused so they overlapped. Obviously the webpage is static, but it gives a sense of what the desktop-based interactive visualization was like.)
variaga 5y ago
It's a great visualization. Can any geologists out there explain the isolated earthquake cluster under Puerto Rico? It doesn't seem to be part of a fault line.
- jofer 5y ago
  Puerto Rico actually is on a plate boundary. Most of those earthquakes outline the Puerto Rico Trench -- a southward-dipping subduction zone at the edge of the Caribbean Plate (that wraps around to connect with both the strike-slip plate boundary to the west and the weastward-dipping Lesser Antilles subduction zone to the southeast).
gus_massa 5y ago
It would be nice to have a button to switch between exaggerated depth and normal depth.

50 points by pps 5y ago

GrumpyNl 5y ago

Nice visualization but when you rotate or zoom the earthquakes dont move.

eganist 5y ago
works fine (though extremely slow) for me on current firefox on windows 10

fghorow 5y ago

Nice! I'm going to use (and cite) that idea of plotting only the country outlines on the continents!

jofer 5y ago

Always interesting to see almost the exact same visualization independently appear and reappear over the decades. This is really similar to a standard teaching visualization back in the late 90's-early 2000's (complete with stereo glasses). It was in turn sourced from mid-90's era SGI visualizations. I'm pretty sure it's older than that, as there are similar figures in a few papers and textbooks from the 80's, but I started doing all of this (i.e. visualizing geophysical data) in the early 2000's, so that's as far back as I really know. I'm pretty sure I have a vrml or openinventor file of a near identical visualization around somewhere... Country outlines and all, with an optional "inner globe" so that you didn't see through to the other side. It used to be a standard demo that came with one of the stereo-capable VRML viewers that was commonly used in "geowall" setups. (Immersaview, maybe?) Here we go... Things like this: https://www.evl.uic.edu/aspale/writing/immersaview-documentation/readme.html https://www.evl.uic.edu/aspale/writing/immersaview-documenta... and specifically https://www.evl.uic.edu/aspale/writing/immersaview-documentation/quakesGlobe.jpg https://www.evl.uic.edu/aspale/writing/immersaview-documenta... (Side-by-side view is for dual-screen stereographic 3D setups - usually two projectors with different polarization filters focused so they overlapped. Obviously the webpage is static, but it gives a sense of what the desktop-based interactive visualization was like.)

variaga 5y ago

It's a great visualization. Can any geologists out there explain the isolated earthquake cluster under Puerto Rico? It doesn't seem to be part of a fault line.

jofer 5y ago
Puerto Rico actually is on a plate boundary. Most of those earthquakes outline the Puerto Rico Trench -- a southward-dipping subduction zone at the edge of the Caribbean Plate (that wraps around to connect with both the strike-slip plate boundary to the west and the weastward-dipping Lesser Antilles subduction zone to the southeast).

gus_massa 5y ago

It would be nice to have a button to switch between exaggerated depth and normal depth.