Geophysics in the Cloud
2025-11-04 , Lake Audubon

EarthScope is moving its seismic and geodetic data archive to the cloud and deploying GeoLab as an analytic environment. This talk documents the process and architecture to provide free global access to data and compute to understand Earth processes.


Much geospatial analysis is devoted to natural or built environments on the Earth's surface. However, it is equally important to understand subsurface processes that affect these environments, such as earthquakes, landslides, and tsunamis. EarthScope collects and archives global seismic and geodetic data and is moving the archive from on-prem data centers to the cloud in Analysis Ready, Cloud Optimized (ARCO) formats. In addition to providing free access to the data, EarthScope is deploying GeoLab, a JupyterHub-based environment to support data analysis. GeoLab enables the integration of subsurface analysis with traditional geospatial analysis. For example, a researcher can combine fire burn scars from satellite imagery with soil moisture measurements from GNSS (via interferometric reflectometry) as inputs into a landslide model. This presentation demonstrates how cloud-based platforms and ARCO data can combine disparate data sets to enhance analytic processes.