Checking out a few tweets this evening I noticed this one from the USGS:
I followed the tweeted link to more details about the recent earthquake swarm in Arkansas, and went to the data and feeds page to make my own map. I made my first map by opening the KML file in ArcGIS Explorer Desktop, shown below.
The great thing about opening the KML in Explorer vs. Google Earth is that I could choose from many different basemaps, or combine other ArcGIS Online services like population density (shown below) to see how many folks were close by. From the population density l discovered that the population density near the quake cluster is very low.
I also used the buffer tool (found in the Analysis Gallery)
to create several radii to see how far away the smaller quakes were to the largest quake, a 4.0 shown in red. I created 3, 4, and 5 mile rings and discovered that most of the swarm was within 4 miles of the epicenter of the largest quake.
Since I wanted to keep an eye on the swarm, I decided to add the GeoRSS feed which is dynamic, and continually updated. To add the feed I clicked Add Content and chose GIS Services:
Then chose GeoRSS as the service type:
And entered the URL I found at the USGS website for the feed:
Next I chose the update interval, and since I wanted to view the latest earthquakes each time I opened the map, I toggled the second option. I could also have set the update to refresh periodically. Below is the GeoRSS feed shown in my map.
For more information check out these help topics:
