The US Geological Survey and Google are now making global earthquake data available in Google Earth as one of the layers under “Places of Interest.”

According to the USGS:

USGS and Google signed an agreement to publish historic earthquake data from the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) catalog as a “built-in” layer, accessible directly from the Google Earth viewer . . . The new layer includes historic earthquakes since 1900, and USGS real-time earthquakes are now accessible as a hyperlink from within Google Earth. If the layer is checked, users will see a sprinkling of dots across the globe, each marking an earthquake epicenter.

To display the earthquake locations in the Google Earth viewer, go to the layers menu, and look in the folder “Places of Interest.” Open the “Geographic Features” folder, and click on “Earthquakes.”

Related Topics: Google: Earth | Search Engines: Government Search Engines

About The Author: Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog Screenwerk, about SoLoMo issues and connecting the dots between online and offline. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet. Follow him @gsterling. See more articles by Greg Sterling