Exploring Earthquake Country

Seismic Exploration with Real-world Data
Data Provided by the Southern California Earthquake Data Center (SCEC)

Tutorial on How to use the Google Earth Format Download Feature

Step 1: Open the Google Earth Format Download page on the Discover Data Portal in the Exploring Earthquake Country course at http://education.sdsc.edu/discoverdata/mod/resource/view.php?id=470.

Step 2: Specify the start date and end date

Step 3: Click submit and choose to save the file to your local computer. You may rename the file or keep the default name which includes the date and time the file was downloaded.

Step 4: Launch Google Earth.

Step 5: Choose File >> Open and navigate to your saved file. Select the file and click Open.

Step 6: Google Earth should center the view on the region containing the downloaded data and you should see something like the image below:

Step 7: If you do not see any colored dots over California, locate the California Earthquakes Layer in the "Places" column on the left of the screen and be sure the checkbox is checked:

If the checkbox is checked but you still do not see any data, locate the Time Widget in the upper right corner of the screen:

The Google Earth Time Widget allows you to set an epoch width by clicking and dragging one of the small white vertical bars to make the epoch wider or narrower. If the epoch is zero width, you will not see any data.

Step 8: To use the Google Earth Time Widget, you may click the grey play button to the right of the widget, or you may click the white step forward or step backward buttons on the right or left of the widget, or you may click and drage the epoch tool back and forth to manually slide through the data.

That's it!!