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data trove usgs significant earthquakes

source /home/coolhand/html/datavis/data_trove/data/wild/usgs_significant_earthquakes.json 3,742 rows 11 columns profiled 2026-06-22 raw JSON static .html .ipynb Report Notebook

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dataset summary · high confidence anthropic:default

This dataset contains 3,742 records of significant earthquakes catalogued by the USGS, each describing a seismic event with location, magnitude, depth, and type. The vast majority (99.9%) are classified as earthquakes, with just 2 explosions and 1 landslide, so event type is not a useful differentiator. Two things stand out for closer inspection: first, depth_km is heavily right-skewed (median 10 km, mean 23.7 km, max 248.7 km) with 314 outliers, suggesting a small but important subset of unusually deep earthquakes worth isolating. Second, geographic concentration is striking — Alaska dominates the place names (appearing in roughly 1,991 records) and 'off the coast of Oregon' is the single most repeated location (151 times), pointing to a strong Pacific Northwest and Alaskan bias in this 'significant' events catalog. Magnitude ranges from 4.5 to 8.2 with a median of 4.8 and a long upper tail, meaning truly destructive events are rare outliers worth flagging.

citing: depth_km.stats.median · depth_km.stats.mean · depth_km.stats.max · depth_km.n_outliers · depth_km.stats.skew · magnitude.stats.median · magnitude.stats.max · magnitude.stats.min · magnitude.n_outliers · earthquake_type.top_values · place.top_values · name.top_words · row_count

magnitude · Look for the long right tail — most events cluster between 4.5 and 5.1, but a small number exceed 7.0 and represent the truly destructive quakes.
Show data table
bincount
4.5 – 4.593752
4.593 – 4.685601
4.685 – 4.777445
4.777 – 4.87340
4.87 – 4.963286
4.963 – 5.055254
5.055 – 5.147218
5.147 – 5.24177
5.24 – 5.332137
5.332 – 5.425104
5.425 – 5.51885
5.518 – 5.6166
5.61 – 5.70253
5.702 – 5.7953
5.795 – 5.88738
5.887 – 5.9846
5.98 – 6.07225
6.072 – 6.16517
6.165 – 6.25716
6.257 – 6.3511
6.35 – 6.44215
6.442 – 6.53511
6.535 – 6.62710
6.627 – 6.724
6.72 – 6.8126
6.812 – 6.9055
6.905 – 6.9970
6.997 – 7.093
7.09 – 7.1823
7.182 – 7.2753
7.275 – 7.3671
7.367 – 7.460
7.46 – 7.5521
7.552 – 7.6451
7.645 – 7.7370
7.737 – 7.832
7.83 – 7.9222
7.922 – 8.0150
8.015 – 8.1070
8.107 – 8.21
depth_km · The distribution is heavily skewed with a median of 10 km, but 314 outliers extend to 248.7 km — deep-focus events that behave very differently from shallow ones.
Show data table
bincount
-2.261 – 4.013219
4.013 – 10.291730
10.29 – 16.56370
16.56 – 22.84258
22.84 – 29.11230
29.11 – 35.38250
35.38 – 41.66167
41.66 – 47.93129
47.93 – 54.2156
54.21 – 60.4831
60.48 – 66.7543
66.75 – 73.0327
73.03 – 79.319
79.3 – 85.5829
85.58 – 91.8521
91.85 – 98.1219
98.12 – 104.424
104.4 – 110.712
110.7 – 116.99
116.9 – 123.214
123.2 – 129.513
129.5 – 135.819
135.8 – 14214
142 – 148.35
148.3 – 154.66
154.6 – 160.90
160.9 – 167.17
167.1 – 173.44
173.4 – 179.70
179.7 – 1861
186 – 192.25
192.2 – 198.51
198.5 – 204.83
204.8 – 211.12
211.1 – 217.33
217.3 – 223.61
223.6 – 229.90
229.9 – 236.20
236.2 – 242.40
242.4 – 248.71
place · Alaska and the Oregon coast dominate locations, revealing a strong geographic concentration in the Pacific Northwest and Aleutian arc.
Show data table
charscount
4 – 51
5 – 70
7 – 81
8 – 100
10 – 110
11 – 120
12 – 142
14 – 1511
15 – 1640
16 – 181
18 – 1920
19 – 2019
20 – 228
22 – 23219
23 – 2560
25 – 26122
26 – 27543
27 – 29499
29 – 30823
30 – 32325
32 – 33362
33 – 34378
34 – 36105
36 – 3740
37 – 3837
38 – 4025
40 – 4134
41 – 423
42 – 440
44 – 4515
45 – 4722
47 – 4814
48 – 493
49 – 511
51 – 522
52 – 545
54 – 550
55 – 560
56 – 580
58 – 592
earthquake_type · Nearly all events (99.9%) are earthquakes; the two explosions and one landslide are negligible but worth confirming as data anomalies.
Show data table
valuecountshare
earthquake373999.9%
explosion20.1%
landslide10.0%
latitude · Latitude distribution confirms geographic clustering in the 40–60° N range, consistent with Alaska and Pacific Northwest dominance.
Show data table
bincount
20.02 – 21.2635
21.26 – 22.5128
22.51 – 23.7542
23.75 – 2588
25 – 26.2491
26.24 – 27.4935
27.49 – 28.7343
28.73 – 29.9839
29.98 – 31.2252
31.22 – 32.4683
32.46 – 33.7152
33.71 – 34.9526
34.95 – 36.267
36.2 – 37.4443
37.44 – 38.6954
38.69 – 39.9322
39.93 – 41.18131
41.18 – 42.4252
42.42 – 43.6696
43.66 – 44.91177
44.91 – 46.154
46.15 – 47.47
47.4 – 48.6434
48.64 – 49.89117
49.89 – 51.13151
51.13 – 52.38288
52.38 – 53.62423
53.62 – 54.86349
54.86 – 56.11223
56.11 – 57.35201
57.35 – 58.675
58.6 – 59.84104
59.84 – 61.09116
61.09 – 62.33117
62.33 – 63.58120
63.58 – 64.8233
64.82 – 66.0635
66.06 – 67.3125
67.31 – 68.5529
68.55 – 69.835

Schema

11 columns
Alerts
latitude numeric 0.0% 3,627
longitude numeric 0.0% 3,668
name text 0.0% 3,002
multilingual
description text 0.0% 3,591
near_unique
category categorical 0.0% 1
imbalance
date text 0.0% 3,741
near_unique one_word allcaps short_text
country unknown 0.0% —
skipped
magnitude numeric 0.0% 123
depth_km numeric 0.0% 1,505
high_skew outliers
place text 0.0% 3,002
multilingual
earthquake_type categorical 0.0% 3
imbalance

latitude

numeric feature
This column contains geographic latitude coordinates, ranging from 20.02° (subtropical) to 69.7975° (Arctic), indicating a dataset spanning locations across the Northern Hemisphere, likely Europe and parts of North America or Asia. The median of 52.4° and mean of 48.5° suggest a concentration of records around central/northern Europe. Near-zero skew (−0.76) and platykurtic distribution (kurtosis −0.29) indicate a relatively flat, spread-out distribution with no extreme clustering. High cardinality (3,627 unique values out of 3,742 rows) confirms these are precise geospatial coordinates rather than bucketed regions. Treatment: Use as-is or pair with longitude for spatial modelling; consider binning into geographic zones if used as a categorical feature. high · anthropic:default
n
3,742
nulls
0 (0.0%)
unique
3,627
min
20.02
max
69.8
mean
48.53
median
52.4
std
11.58
q1
41.34
q3
55.9
iqr
14.56
skew
-0.7591
kurtosis
-0.2887
n_outliers
0
outlier_rate
0
zero_rate
0

longitude

numeric feature
This column contains geographic longitude values, all negative, indicating locations exclusively in the Western Hemisphere. The range spans from approximately -170° (near the International Date Line, consistent with Alaska or Pacific islands) to -65° (eastern US/Caribbean region), with a mean near -140° and median near -144°, suggesting a heavy concentration of observations in Alaska or the North Pacific. The distribution is mildly right-skewed (skew 0.45) with near-platykurtic shape (kurtosis -0.43), implying a broad but relatively uniform spread across this western band rather than a tight geographic cluster. Only 26 outliers (0.69%) are flagged, and with 3,668 unique values out of 3,742 rows, coordinates appear precise and largely non-duplicated. Treatment: Pair with latitude for spatial analysis; consider geographic binning or projection into a coordinate reference system before modelling. high · anthropic:default
n
3,742
nulls
0 (0.0%)
unique
3,668
min
-170
max
-65.04
mean
-140.1
median
-144.2
std
21.81
q1
-159.9
q3
-125.1
iqr
34.84
skew
0.4489
kurtosis
-0.4302
n_outliers
26
outlier_rate
0.006948
zero_rate
0

name

text label multilingual
This column contains geographic location descriptions for seismic events, formatted as place names relative to known landmarks (e.g., '104 km SSW of Nikolski, Alaska'). The dominant region is Alaska, appearing in 1,991 of ~3,742 entries, with Canada and Mexico also frequent. Notably, 740 duplicate values (19.8% duplicate rate) exist despite only 3,002 unique values out of 3,742 rows, driven by repeated location labels like 'off the coast of Oregon' (151 occurrences), suggesting many events cluster in the same geographic zones. A multilingual alert fires, but non-English entries are negligible (21 rows across de/es/ja/ceb vs. 3,719 en), so this is not a practical concern. Treatment: Use as a categorical geographic label; consider parsing direction/distance/place subcomponents for structured feature engineering, or embed as text for ML. high · anthropic:default
n
3,742
nulls
0 (0.0%)
unique
3,002
len_min
4
len_max
59
len_mean
29.47
len_median
29
len_p95
36
word_mean
6.293
word_median
6
n_empty
0
n_duplicates
740
duplicate_rate
0.1978
vocab_size
1,036
readability_flesch_mean
69.91
emoji_rate
0
url_rate
0
one_word_rate
0.0005345
allcaps_rate
0
boilerplate_rate
0

description

text label near_unique
This column contains structured natural-language descriptions of seismic events, likely auto-generated strings of the form 'Earthquake magnitude X - depth: Y km [location]'. The top words confirm every row references 'earthquake', 'magnitude', 'depth:', and 'km', making this a templated field rather than free prose (mean length 71.7 chars, mean 12.3 words, Flesch readability 63.2). Surprising signals: 151 duplicate descriptions (4.0% duplicate rate) despite 3,742 rows, meaning distinct earthquake events share identical text — likely collisions on rounded magnitude/depth/location values. The vocabulary of only 2,674 unique words across 3,742 rows further confirms the highly templated, low-diversity nature of the text. Treatment: Parse structured fields (magnitude, depth, location) via regex rather than embedding; flag duplicate descriptions that may map to distinct events. high · anthropic:default
n
3,742
nulls
0 (0.0%)
unique
3,591
len_min
45
len_max
100
len_mean
71.71
len_median
72
len_p95
79
word_mean
12.29
word_median
12
n_empty
0
n_duplicates
151
duplicate_rate
0.04035
vocab_size
2,674
readability_flesch_mean
63.23
emoji_rate
0
url_rate
0
one_word_rate
0
allcaps_rate
0
boilerplate_rate
0

category

categorical metadata imbalance
This column is a dataset-level category tag indicating the source or filter applied to all 3,742 rows — every single record carries the value 'significant_earthquakes' with a top_rate of 1.0 and entropy of 0.0. It is a constant column with zero discriminative power. The imbalance alert confirms it: cardinality is 1, meaning this field adds no within-dataset information whatsoever. Treatment: Drop before modelling — zero-variance constant column provides no predictive signal. high · anthropic:default
n
3,742
nulls
0 (0.0%)
unique
1
top_value
significant_earthquakes
top_rate
1
cardinality
1
entropy
0
entropy_ratio
0

date

text timestamp near_unique one_word allcaps short_text
This column is named 'date' but contains values that are clearly not valid calendar dates — the year component is a 13-digit Unix timestamp in milliseconds (e.g., '1614452365296') appended with '-01-01', indicating a malformed or incorrectly formatted datetime field. With 3,741 unique values out of 3,742 rows and near-zero duplicates (only 1 duplicate exists), this column functions almost as a row identifier. The one duplicate ('1614452365296-01-01' appearing twice) is the only anomaly in an otherwise fully unique set. Treatment: Parse the numeric prefix as a Unix millisecond timestamp (divide by 1000 for seconds), discard the '-01-01' suffix artifact, and convert to a proper datetime before any temporal analysis. high · anthropic:default
n
3,742
nulls
0 (0.0%)
unique
3,741
len_min
18
len_max
19
len_mean
18.95
len_median
19
len_p95
19
word_mean
1
word_median
1
n_empty
0
n_duplicates
1
duplicate_rate
0.0002672
vocab_size
3,741
readability_flesch_mean
121.2
emoji_rate
0
url_rate
0
one_word_rate
1
allcaps_rate
1
boilerplate_rate
0

country

unknown label skipped
This column contains country values across 3,742 rows with no nulls. The profiler skipped detailed analysis ('skipped' alert), so cardinality, value distribution, and encoding format (ISO codes vs. full names) are unknown. The absence of any stats prevents assessment of skew, dominant categories, or anomalies. Treatment: Re-profile to obtain value counts and cardinality; standardize to ISO 3166-1 alpha-2/3 codes before encoding or joining. low · anthropic:default
n
3,742
nulls
0 (0.0%)
unique
—

magnitude

numeric feature
This column represents seismic event magnitude, almost certainly on the Richter or moment magnitude scale, given the range of 4.5–8.2 and mean of ~4.92. Despite 3,742 records, only 123 unique values appear, indicating the data is reported at one decimal place of precision. The distribution is strongly right-skewed (skew=1.97) with high kurtosis (5.58), meaning the vast majority of events cluster in the 4.6–5.1 IQR while 184 outliers (≈4.9% of records) pull the tail toward the extreme 8.2 maximum — a pattern entirely consistent with earthquake frequency-magnitude relationships (Gutenberg-Richter law). Treatment: Log-transform or use as-is for seismic models; treat outlier events (>6.5 approx) as a separate high-impact stratum given the severe right skew. high · anthropic:default
n
3,742
nulls
0 (0.0%)
unique
123
min
4.5
max
8.2
mean
4.917
median
4.8
std
0.462
q1
4.6
q3
5.1
iqr
0.5
skew
1.97
kurtosis
5.583
n_outliers
184
outlier_rate
0.04917
zero_rate
0

depth_km

numeric feature high_skew outliers
This column represents seismic event or borehole depth in kilometres, almost certainly from an earthquake catalogue or geological survey dataset. The distribution is severely right-skewed (skew 3.07, kurtosis 11.61): the median is just 10.0 km—a canonical default depth assigned when depth is poorly constrained—with Q1 also exactly 10.0 km, suggesting a large fraction of records are pinned to that default value. The tail extends to 248.7 km with 314 outliers (8.4%), and a small negative minimum (−2.261 km) indicates above-sea-level or instrument-offset events that may need review. Treatment: Investigate Q1=median=10.0 km pile-up for catalog-assigned default depths; log-transform or use quantile binning before modelling, and flag/separate records with depth < 0 km. high · anthropic:default
n
3,742
nulls
0 (0.0%)
unique
1,505
min
-2.261
max
248.7
mean
23.71
median
10
std
28.79
q1
10
q3
29.1
iqr
19.1
skew
3.072
kurtosis
11.61
n_outliers
314
outlier_rate
0.08391
zero_rate
0.002672

place

text label multilingual
This column contains human-readable geographic location descriptions for seismic or oceanographic events, predominantly structured as compass-bearing distance strings (e.g., '104 km SSW of Nikolski, Alaska'). Nearly all 3,742 entries are in English (3,719), with negligible Spanish, German, Cebuano, and Japanese entries flagging a multilingual alert. The dominant location is 'off the coast of Oregon' appearing 151 times — far more than any other value — and 740 duplicate entries (19.8% duplicate rate) suggest event clustering at recurring geographic hotspots. The vocabulary of directional abbreviations (SSW, SSE, SE, W) and 'km' appearing 3,220 times confirms a standardized but free-text geocoding convention. Treatment: Parse structured distance-bearing substrings (e.g., regex on 'km [NSEW]+') to extract numeric distance and cardinal direction as features; consider geocoding to lat/lon for spatial modelling. high · anthropic:default
n
3,742
nulls
0 (0.0%)
unique
3,002
len_min
4
len_max
59
len_mean
29.47
len_median
29
len_p95
36
word_mean
6.293
word_median
6
n_empty
0
n_duplicates
740
duplicate_rate
0.1978
vocab_size
1,036
readability_flesch_mean
69.91
emoji_rate
0
url_rate
0
one_word_rate
0.0005345
allcaps_rate
0
boilerplate_rate
0

earthquake_type

categorical label imbalance
This column classifies seismic event types, with three possible values: 'earthquake', 'explosion', and 'landslide'. It is severely imbalanced: 'earthquake' accounts for 3,739 of 3,742 records (99.92%), leaving only 2 explosions and 1 landslide. The near-zero entropy (0.0101) and entropy_ratio (0.0064) confirm the column carries almost no information variance, which will make it useless as a predictive feature without special handling. Treatment: Drop or use only as a stratification/filter variable; minority classes (n=2, n=1) are too rare for meaningful multi-class modelling without heavy oversampling. high · anthropic:default
n
3,742
nulls
0 (0.0%)
unique
3
top_value
earthquake
top_rate
0.9992
cardinality
3
entropy
0.01014
entropy_ratio
0.006396