FDSN Station Web Service
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Description The fdsnws-station web service returns station metadata in FDSN StationXML format (schema here) or as delimited text. Results are available at multiple levels of granularity: network, station, channel and response. Metadata may be selected based on channel descriptors, time ranges, geographic regions, and more. This service is an implementation of the FDSN web service specification version 1.1.
Service Output Information can be retrieved at different levels of detail The station web service can return station information at multiple levels of detail. The service response time and the volume of information returned are directly related to the requested level. With increasing detail the levels are:
| network | net | Network level information only, network description and station count. |
| station | sta | Station description, coordinates, time ranges and channel count. The default level. |
| channel | cha | Channel descriptions, coordinates, time ranges, instrument descriptions and channel sensitivity. |
| response | resp | Complete channel response information. |
Output format FDSN StationXML The FDSN StationXML format is an XML schema designed for exchanging station metadata. Text The text format contains parameters separated by vertical bar characters (|). Sample text output for level=network Sample text output for level=station Sample text output for level=channel The text format is not available for level=response. Metadata selection The fdsnws-station service allows data selection using the following parameters: * Network, station, location and channel * Time windowing * Geographic region, rectangular area or radius from a point * Metadata updated after a specific date * Time series data availability
Using Wildcards and lists Both wildcards and lists can be used for channel naming criteria: network, station, location, channel.
Wildcards The service supports the use of * (asterisk) and ? (question mark) in specifying search criteria. The * is used to indicate any combination of characters while ? is used to indicate one character only. They can be used at the beginning, middle or the end of the search criteria. Some examples: net=B*, net=*K, chan=B*Z or chan=B?Z.
Lists Users can specify multiple networks, stations, channels or locations in their search criteria by providing comma separated list. For example: sta=CMB,BKS or chan=BHZ,BHE.
Geographic search Searches may be limited geographically, either by specifying a bounding rectangle of minimum and maximum latitudes and longitudes, or by specifying a bounding radius, using a minimum/maximum radius around a latitude/longitude pair. These two types of search are exclusive. All values are specified using decimal degrees.
Using latitude / longitude boundaries (Bounding Rectangle) The following four parameters work together to specify a boundary rectangle: minlatitude, maxlatitude, minlongitude, maxlongitude. All four parameters are optional, but may not be mixed with the parameters used for searching within a defined radius. The bounding box will cross the +/- 180 meridian when minlongitude > maxlongitude.
Using a radial boundary (Bounding Radius) The following four parameters work together to search within a great circle radius around a coordinate: latitude, longitude, maxradius, minradius. If any these parameters are used, all other (unspecified) parameters are assigned default values.
Temporal searches starttime, endtime, startbefore, endbefore, startafter, endafter All of these criteria are applied to the channel epochs to limit the returned metadata. Even when the requested level is network or station, the test is applied to the channel epochs within the networks and stations. This means it is not possible to select network or station time ranges where there are no channels defined, but this situation rarely occurs and would be mostly meaningless from a data-use perspective.
Data Availability Time series extents - that is, the time period over which each channel's time-series data has been archived at the NCEDC - are available through this service. These can be used to limit the results, or may also be included within the results. Some caveats associated with the time series availabilities: * Extents are based upon when time series data first arrived until it was last received. There may be large data gaps that are not shown, so there is no guarantee that time series data will exist for the requested time period. * Real-time data are not reflected in the results. includeavailability Specifying includeavailability=true will include a section in the XML that lists the time period for which archived data may exist. The start and end extents refer to the times that data for this channel was first received and last received respectively. wget example Requests can be made with a selection file and the wget unix command line utility. $ cat station.request level=station format=xml NC * -- BHZ 2010-03-25T00:00:00 2010-04-01T00:00:00 BK CMB -- BH* 2010-03-25T00:00:00 2010-04-01T00:00:00 $ wget --post-file=station.request -O station.xml https://service.ncedc.org/fdsnws/station/1/query This will send the request to the server and save the results in a file name station.xml
curl example Requests can also be made with a selection file and the curl unix command line utility. $ cat channel.request level=channel format=text BK CMB * * 2000-01-15T00:00:00 2010-04-01T00:00:00 $ curl --data-binary @channel.request -o channel.txt https://service.ncedc.org/fdsnws/station/1/query This will send the request to the server and save the results in a file name channel.txt