Waveform Access
The GFZ Seismological Data Archive is the largest seismological data archive in Europe. It holds data from the permanent GEOFON VBB seismic network. For many GEOFON partner networks, GEOFON acts as backup archive and data distribution center. Additionally, data from many temporary station deployments are permanently archived at GEOFON, in particular passive seismological experiments of the GFZ Geophysical Instrument Pool Potsdam (GIPP) and the German Task Force Earthquake (data archival pending).
Real-time data streams from permanent networks are mostly acquired over the Internet and are immediately accessible as continuous data stream by SeedLink real-time feeds or on request from the archive. Most of the European networks acquired are contributed to EIDA. (In part EIDA grew out of an earlier concept, the VEBSN.) Although the archive consists mostly of data from broadband stations, a substantial amount of short period data is archived as well as some strong motion and OBS data.
The GEOFON Data Archive is linked to other partner data centers in Germany (German Integrated Data Archive - GIDA) and Europe (European Integrated Data Archive - EIDA). This integrated data archive infrastructure allows transparent access to the data of all participating archives through a single front-end data portal. All data are accessible in a unified way through FDSN web services and SeedLink.
Archive Access Overview
| Method | Open GFZ Nets | Restricted GFZ Data | Other EIDA Nets1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WebDC3 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| fdsnws-station | Yes | Yes | No |
| fdsnws-dataselect | Yes | Yes | No2 |
Notes
- EIDA nets are third-party contributions to the EIDA collaboration, hosted at other nodes.
- Except where the EIDA contributor lists GFZ as an alternative route.
Data availability
- Seismic networks and stations are available from the GFZ Seismological Data Archive (GEOFON).
- Information about some networks is also available as detailed data reports.
- For local archive data availability check our availability database. WFcatalog is also useful for this.
- Transparent access to other GIDA/EIDA nodes through the GFZ WebDC3 data portal.
Archive access
Most waveform data archived at GEOFON is open and available to all users. Several methods are available to access waveform data from the GEOFON archive:
- Web-based requests through our web portal, especially for smaller requests.
- Using the FDSN web services, for data archived at GFZ.
- Access through the FDSN web services using the fdsnws_fetch command line client (part of the fdsnwsscripts package)
Access to some data sets is limited to certain users. For details about obtaining permission to access these, see "Access to restricted archive data". Technical methods for retrieving restricted data are described here. The "EAS User Documentation" has additional details.
Discontinuation of Arclink
After many years, Arclink access ended in December 2019. Synchronisation between EIDA nodes no longer occurs. See ORFEUS's announcement for additional information about the shutdown of this service.
Real-Time data feeds
GEOFON/GEVN data are available as real-time data feeds without special permission by the SeedLink protocol from the GEOFON SeedLink server at geofon.gfz-potsdam.de:18000. A visualization of the GEOFON real-time stations is provided in the form of "live" seismogram plots.
- GEOFON SeedLink Monitor for GFZ networks
- GEVN SeedLink Monitor for GEOFON partner networks
Data formats
- SeedLink real-time data comes in 512 byte Mini-SEED format.
- Archive data shipments in 512 or 4096 byte SEED format.
- Instrument response information as FDSN StationXML is available through the WebDC3 portal or as SeisComP XML from network pages.
- In addition, instrument response information as SeisComP XML (or Dataless SEED volumes) response files are available through the WebDC3 portal.
