Epicentral is a simple network-based appli-cation that displays an automatically updated map of recent earthquake epicenters. The hard work is done by US Geological Survey scientists. This tool just periodically downloads an event list & displays a map. You can also view information on the recent seismic activity in a earthquake list window, which contains more information on the earthquakes.

This software is unsupported - I would enjoy hearing if you like it and use it, but I unfortunately have no time to answer questions or respond to requests for modifications. The program is free, but I retain all rights related to this software. I have no plans to distribute the source code.

Charles J. Ammon
21 December, 2005

To get started, click on the information button in the lower right. By default the map is not updated automatically. Set your time interval and click ok. Updates only take a few seconds, and the program does not use much of your CPU. You can control the colors and sizes of the symbols, as well as the magnitude range that you choose to monitor (you can look at small events in regions where US seismic seismic network coverage is dense (Alaska, California, Puerto Rico, etc.). Check out the windows menu for additional features. The pretty images were made by others: The "Natural" Map Image is from Tom Patterson, US National Park Service, Harpers Ferry Center; The Topo/Bathymetry Image is from NOAA (they used bathymetry from Smith & Sandwell); the plate boundaries are from Peter Bird, UCLA.

This program is an educational tool - not an authoritative tool for earthquake monitoring. I developed it so that I have a convenient tool to show students the location of recent earth-quake activity. The data that are loaded are served by the USGS National Earthquake Information Center - they are the authorities on these issues.

The application requires that you can connect to the INTERNET to download recent earthquake locations. System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.1 or higher.

Download version 1.2.0 for 10.4.x and later.

Download version 2.0.4 for 10.6.x and later.

The latest version:

Download version 2.0.5 for 10.10.x and later.